Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Quotation's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, March 15th, 2009
3:26 am	As promised for the J.Flo (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
9:25 pm	How my weekend was made. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 16th, 2009
10:05 am	Some notes on US Airways Flight 1549 ditching in the Hudson River Well, first, this goes to show how breaking news reporting has changed forever. Now, if only twitter could get its shit together with organization and stability... I digress. As with all aviation reporting in the mainstream media, I've got some concerns with what the whackjobs are saying. To that end, I've put together an analysis for you, based on actual data right here. Note that all of the blue points were plotted in the space of five minutes of flight time, and that the alleged bird strike occured within 1-3 minutes of takeoff. For a nice long narrative about it, check what Patrick Smith has to say. He's incredibly reliable. Some additional points: * Neither of the two pilots at the controls, Chesley Sullenberger and Benjamin Bronk, would have been able to do this alone. * The heroes of this event are, in my mind, the flight attendants. Same thing for the Air France crash at Pearson. Cabin crew are not there to bring you peanuts, they're there to save your life. When they give you peanuts, thank them for it. * I'm boycotting Air Canada. This is just demented. No lives were lost because of decades of painstaking work by authorities and industry to work through scenarios like this, and because of textbook execution by the crew. Edit: Count how much time passes between the splash and the wings being full of people: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e6_1232166872 Edit 2: Better video footage of the initial splashdown: http://www.truveo.com/Newly-released-video-shows-plane-landing-on-Hudson/id/901984028 (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
11:19 pm	Is your livejournal important to you? Well, so far this week, livejournal has laid off 20 of its 28 staff and some of its webservers have already started to behave oddly. This might be the end of the line for the old girl. I think most of us have found each other on facebook by now, just in case LJ disappears without further warning. I've made a backup of all my posts and comments; it all comes out as a big long webpage page with everything included. (XML dumps also available). If you'd like me to prep a backup of yours, just send me your password somehow. To do the backup yourself (If you have a UNIX box), my command was: ./jbackup.pl --user="quotation" --password="YeahRight" --server="www.livejournal.com" --sync --dump=html --file=quotation.html (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
8:40 am	Merry Christmas! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
10:57 pm	What my mother got for Christmas. Shoot me now. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
11:25 pm	On the wisdom of Tom Paxton. As only a very small number of you know, I've been a huge fan of Tom Paxton ever since I found one of his tapes in my father's collection when I was just knee-high to a buzzard. I'm sure you're all familiar with The Marvelous Toy and Going To The Zoo. Those are two of his most well-known children's songs -- the kind of children's songs that are played so often by so many that it's hard to imagine them ever being composed to begin with. They're simply songs. In the 1960s, Tom was also a prolific songwriter of activism. He had opinions about Vietnam, government intervention in free market economics, nuclear proliferation, and all of the other fun hot-button topics of the day -- and he put them all beautifully in to song. As I grew older, of course, I started to understand more of the songs. A song that made no sense to me at all as a child, now makes perfect sense now that I've understood its historical context. I'd read a piece of history from 1965, and the meaning of a well-known song could change completely in an instant. If you haven't heard them before, I'd strongly recommend listening to Buy a Gun for your Son, What did you learn in school today? (Sung here by Pete Seeger), and The Willing Conscript (Sorry for that last video -- I can't find a linkable cover that does it any justice, but I can't leave that song off the list, it's my favouritest). It wasn't until a couple of years ago that, while looking up lyrics, I came to find that he was still recording, and he's still got the touch. If there's nobody around to see you cry, then check out The Bravest. If you'd like your milk to come out your nose, give a listen to Tinky-Winky. Not only have Tom's songs been steeped in awesomeness, but they also manage to be both immediately topical, but also eerily timeless. Tom Paxton's songs from the 60s and 70s still rung true today, with parallels that aren't lost on him at all. Yes, Tom Paxton has been re-recording some of his old classics. And, as a testament to his continued relevance, I'd like to share two pairs of songs with you. The auto industry bailout of 1979 gave us the first song: I'm Changing My Name To Chrysler (Sung here by Arlo Guthrie): And now redone for 2008, Tom is changing his name to Fanny Mae: In 1964, Lyndon Johnson took the US to war under false pretext and Tom Paxton sang about it: And now, redone for 2007, George W. Told The Nation: I'll close with a stanza from Tom's latest single: Marching 'round the White House, Marching 'round the Pentagon, Marching 'round the mighty missile plants, Speaking truth to power, singing peace to Babylon, Asking us, Why not give peace a chance? How Beautiful Upon The Mountain Comedians & Angels (2008 Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy Nominee) http://www.TomPaxton.com/ (Comment on this)
Friday, December 12th, 2008
6:34 pm	Happy birthday YumiKid! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
4:34 pm	The second letter. Yasmin Ratansi House of Commons 784 Confederation Building Ottawa ON K1A 0A6 19 Nov 2008 Yasmin, On 22 August 2008, I sent you a letter as a constituent. It was a very considered and thoughtful letter, I thought it to be constructive and informative. I asked some questions, and made some requests. On 8 September, I joined the Liberal Party. The federal election had been called the day before, and I felt it was about time I started to learn how to do more for my country and my values than just vote. I received my membership "card" on 7 November, after the 14 October election, likely because the party had better things to do during that time period. I'm okay with that. But just yesterday, I received a letter from you, sent to me as a party member, rather than sent to me as a constituent. The letter was on Liberal letterhead, but in a parliamentary envelope and sent with your franking privileges with your Parliamentary office as the return address. The address on the enclosed letter, however, was that of your campaign office on Victoria Park Avenue, rather than one of either your Parliamentary Address in Ottawa, or the constituency office on file with Parliament on Duncan Mill Road. Clearly, this was party material, and not constituency material. I have two concerns with this experience. First, it's been 3 months since I sent you my letter, and though I haven't heard back from you as a constituent, you still seem to be working hard to drum up more support from party members. Based on my experience so far, I believe that your priorities are deeply misaligned. Additionally, during the campaign, I heard several complaints from Liberal candidates about how the Conservatives were abusing their franking privileges, using them for party and campaign material. Even in your letter of this week, you alluded to your scorn for this "barrage," of which ten-percenters played a major role. And yet, I now feel that you are abusing your franking privileges. I am a citizen, a constituent, a voter, and a taxpayer first. I am a party member second. You have demonstrated to me this week that you are putting your party ahead of your duties and responsibilities as my Member of Parliament, and I consider this to be a betrayal of the trust and confidence that has been placed in you by your constituency. Please change. We deserve better. Yours, quotation (Comment on this)
Friday, November 14th, 2008
8:39 am	I took a screenshot this morning. Let's see how long it lasts. Screenshot taken 8:30am, 14 Nov 2008. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
12:14 pm	Quotation's plan to fix the country Step 1.) Ignatieff quits the Liberal party, joins the NDP, and challenges Layton for the leadership. Step 2.) Rae quits the Liberal party, joins the Green Party, and challenges May for the leadership. Step 3.) Justin Trudeau merges the three parties in to the "Progressive Reform" party. Step 4.) Mike Duffy's head explodes. Step 5.) Profit. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
6:40 am	WARNING: Friends-only posts For some reason, several friends-only locked posts over 2 years old have been mysteriously unlocked by Livejournal this week. Multiple users are affected. Check your posts. Log out, and read your journal. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
4:08 pm	Reviewlet: Burn After Reading Astounding performance by J.K. Simmons, but way too little screen time for him. Great performances by all the actors, actually, but the movie itself was crap. Half as funny as Fargo, and 4 times as long. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
8:36 pm	Upcoming festivities. Birthday celebration planning is underway for the evenings of the 10th and 12th in Toronto. If you want in, but you didn't hear about it because you're not in Toronto, not on my Facebook, or were otherwise omitted from the invitation list -- lemme know. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
10:34 am	An open letter to Stephane Dion and Garth Turner This letter was emailed out to Stéphane, Garth and Yasmin at 5pm. The dead-tree copies should be in their parliament offices by the end of next week. Did you know that sending mail to MPs in Ottawa is free of charge? Try it out! Huge thanks to ben_zine for cleaning up much of my overly verbose language and passive-aggressive sentence structure. To: http://www.stephanedion.parl.gc.ca/ http://www.garth.ca/ CC: http://www.yasminratansi.parl.gc.ca/ Stephane, Garth; On 20 Aug 2008, I had the honour and the privilege of meeting with you at the Halton Town Hall, (http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2008/08/21/in-search-of-hope/) - both in the large Town Hall, as well as in the smaller blogger's reception beforehand. I'd like to thank you for your availability. For your bravery in handling our unscripted and unannounced questions. For your thought leadership, your openness, your passion, and your approachability. Your willingness to address difficult questions from wingnuts such as myself is a welcome change from what we have sadly come to expect from our politicians. I have no doubt that you've been positively influenced by Garth Turner's dedication to open democracy. The bulk of your statements, and the bulk of the questions from the floor dealt with the Green Shift (http://www.thegreenshift.ca/). A question from the floor noted 30,000 scientists who oppose the plan, but my own research today has convinced me that this petition was mostly signed by fictional characters and persons in fields unrelated to climate change or environmental studies. The common name for this petition is the "Oregon Petition," and it's over 7 years old. (http://www.google.ca/search?q=Oregon+Petition) Many of the actual signatories have now changed their positions. I mention this because you were unaware of the petition on Wednesday, and I hope you didn't take it seriously. Your Green Shift plan is simply a logical necessity. I believe that the strategies you've proposed are inevitable and necessary for our survival. Even the current government believes that this taxation of pollution is desperately needed, but their plan for new taxes doesn't include any reductions in personal taxes -- it's just a cash grab! (http://www.ec.gc.ca/doc/virage-corner/2008-03/541_eng.htm) The taxation of pollution is inevitable: we must use market economic externality metering in order to ensure our survival. A mandate to implement the Green Shift with the next election will allow us to start sooner, cheaper, and ramp up more gradually than if we were to put this off any longer. There were other questions from the floor that caused me some concern. Some of the increasingly pressing issues with Canadians are relatively unknown to you, although there was always at least one other MP in attendance who was familiar with them. Because the Liberal Party does not yet seem to have articulated positions on these topics, I'd like to share with you my opinions, in the hopes of making them yours as well. Garth mentioned that he's been able to convince you to start a blog, the "Leader's Notebook" (http://www.liberal.ca/notebook_e.aspx). This move will certainly make you more accessible. In time, I hope you'll be brave enough to permit commenting and discussion. I know I'll certainly follow your postings once they're available for syndication by RSS. The Liberal.CA website has 6 published RSS feeds, but some oversight has left your blog from the list. Additionally, I found that your profile on the Liberal.CA website links to a Facebook profile that does not exist (http://www.liberal.ca/conversation_e.aspx). I'm sure that your web staff will be able to easily correct these oversights once they've been made aware. You mentioned in one of your answers that we would have to build more of a knowledge economy in order to weather the economic changes taking place in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. I have personally transitioned from manufacturing work to a professional career over the past decade, and can vouch for this necessity. Building a knowledge economy requires a knowledge infrastructure. Such an infrastructure includes traditional schools, libraries, and publishing, but also incorporates telecommunications, the internet, and a creative commons. Restrictions on research and development, knowledge sharing, academic discourse and innovation are all barriers to the construction of the kind of knowledge infrastructure that Canada needs to compete on a global scale. Our biggest threat right now is Bill C-61. This bill was crafted in the interests of foreign corporations, and misunderstood even by the tabling minister. Bill C-61 decimates the existing Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act, provisions previously described by the Supreme Court as user rights. Bill C-61 makes it illegal for teachers and librarians to continue sharing knowledge in the ways they have become accustomed, and this is unacceptable. Dr. Micheal Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has proposed that all Members of Parliament be asked to take a copyright pledge in defence of teachers and librarians. The pledge is simple: "I will not introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either directly or indirectly, undermines or weakens the Copyright Act's fair dealing provision." (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2562/125/) Mr. Dion, I challenge you to ask the Liberal caucus to take this pledge with you and affirm your commitment to Canada's knowledge infrastructure. Further, I encourage you to meet with Dr. Geist in order to learn more about these new issues. I know that it is often difficult for experienced politicians to understand the controversies and issues surrounding new technologies, and I hope you'll see Dr. Geist as an ambassador from that world. The internet is a huge component of this new knowledge infrastructure, and wonderful because the internet is decentralized, global, and commoditized. Except that it's not commoditized in Canada. While other countries benefit from a competitive marketplace, Canadians very often only have one or two high-speed telecommunications providers for last-mile service delivery in their areas, and these providers are heavily and successfully lobbying to maintain their monopolies. The current government has instructed the CRTC to take a hands-off approach in regulating the internet. This instruction has effectively handed control of our national knowledge infrastructure to a very small group of companies. Bell has used their monopoly in last-mile DSL-based telecommunications to unfairly and unreasonably interfere with the relationships between consumers and smaller Bell competitors. Rogers has locked out all competitors from their cable-based last-mile monopoly, and Canadian consumers have been left with no other options since the effective failure of Look Communications. Canadians are in dire need of a new competitor in the last-mile telecommunications marketplace, but Canadian regulation of that market prevents new competitors from arising! Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw and Cogego are leveraging the regulation of one market in order to monopolize another unregulated industry, with a disastrous effect on the quality, pricing and other measures of competitive marketplaces. Canadian consumers left to brave the whims of this stale seller's market. This brings us to the subject of network neutrality. Bell's anti-competitive practices are well-known within the government, (http://blog.juliannayau.com/2008/08/21/prentice-response-to-my-email-regarding-net-neutrality/) but our government is simply not taking a leadership stance to ensure that Canada's knowledge infrastructure is nurtured and fostered. In Canada, we only have three wireless telephone network providers: Bell, Telus and Rogers. Other wireless telephone "brands" are subsidiaries or resellers, giving control of our wireless telecommunications to the same effective trifecta monopoly as our last-mile high speed internet connections. I'd like to give you a concrete example of why this is bad. I've got a smartphone, a Nokia e51. When I bought it, the device was light-years ahead of any cellphone sold by Canadian wireless providers; they were unable to satisfy my requirements in a cellphone, so I purchased my phone from an importer. Bell and Telus wouldn't let me use an imported cellphone on their networks, since their infrastructures are too antiquated. This is also the reason why the iPhone only works on the Rogers network (Fido is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rogers). Since Rogers has a complete monopoly on GSM communications in Canada, I'm forced to use Rogers as my wireless provider. Because I have an imported phone, the cheapest wireless internet available to me is $0.05/kB. Your blog, Mr. Dion, is a very modest webpage, and is over 500KB in size. Mr. Turner's blog is double that. It would cost me over $75 to read those two blogs on my cellphone -- just once. Without even reading the comments! In the USA, I could buy an unlimited internet data plan from AT&T for $30/mo. I would pay $30/mo to read your blogs, but not $75. There's no doubt that Research In Motion is a Canadian success story, and an aggressive innovator in its field. It's too bad that the Canadian market is so uncompetitive, causing our citizens to pay significantly more for Blackberry service than those of any other nation. I am confident that the inventors at RIM will explain in private meetings how the current wireless marketplace in Canada is a major barrier to Canadian innovation and technological leadership. (http://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=727) My core theme in this letter is that the Canadian knowledge infrastructure is so misunderstood by so many politicians that Canadians are missing out on the knowledge economy. Technological innovation is fleeing our country, our infrastructure cannot support its development, and backwards legislation like Bill C-61 aims to make it suicidal for consumer electronics companies to operate here. I know that the environment and the Green shift are higher priorities, and are your flagship policies. I know that it would be unreasonable to expect you to become overnight experts in knowledge infrastructure. I urge you, though, to designate a caucus member to become versed in these issues and to engage themselves in the public discussions. The 91,000 Canadians concerned about Bill C-61 are waiting for you at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6315846683 The 24,000 Canadians concerned about net neutrality are waiting for you at http://www.neutrality.ca/ Thanks again for your involvement, http://quota.tion.ca/ (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
11:12 pm	On Hypocricy The internets are abuzz over a series of exceptionally well done Muppets shorts. I have seen them, and they are wonderful. But. Since their release, there has been a continuing, systematic and overwhelming deletion on youtube of everything else Muppet-related -- primarily the classics. For shame. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 18th, 2008
4:02 pm	Further to the competition bureau So here was my complaint to them, sent in on the 8th when I stumbled upon their online complaint form: The competition bureau failed miserably in protecting Canadian consumers by providing competitive high-speed internet over Rogers Cable lines. Please don't fail us again with the Rogers monopoly on GSM Communications in Canada. Now, I have a long letter back from them. It assumes I'm complaining about the iPhone, but there's really much more to it than that. I plan on replying to this letter in a more formal manner after my cottage weekend. So I leave it to you, lazyweb -- do my research and provide my talking points. So much of this letter is demonstrably inaccurate that I'm at a loss for where to start. ( Their Reply ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
3:30 pm	Response from the Competition Bureau . . . It is the Bureau’s view that Rogers does not hold a dominant position in the market for mobile wireless telephony services in Canada. Rogers is in direct competition with two other major wireless providers, in addition to a number of smaller carriers, all of whom offer handsets that are functional substitutes for the iPhone. . . . (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 26th, 2008
8:24 pm	From the Canada Revenue Agency (Paraphrased) Dearest Mr. quotation; We audited your 2006 taxes without telling you, and we figured that you owed us a crapload of money -- enough to pay for a third of your sweet new ride. But, we didn't tell you about the audit until 2008. Even though you objected and challenged our audit in writing before filing your 2007 taxes, we deducted that crapload of money from your 2007 refund, essentially holding your money hostage while we considered your challenge. Today, we admit that we were wrong in our audit, and were wrongfully holding back your refund money for a couple of weeks. So, here's a cheque for the balance. Because we were wrong, we've added on an extra $12.11 in interest on that money. Please note that interest income is taxable. If you do not declare this $12.11 as taxable interest income on your 2008 return, we will audit you again, you nitpicky little motherfucker, and we'll screw you eight ways from Sunday for filing a false return; so let that be a freaking lesson to you. Jackass. Love and kisses, Canada Revenue Agency Dipshits Extraordinaire (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 11th, 2008
8:18 pm	EMail signature disclaimers reach a new low This e-mail may be privileged and/or confidential, and the sender does not waive any related rights and obligations. Any distribution, use or copying of this e-mail or the information it contains by other than an intended recipient(s) is unauthorized. If you received this e-mail in error, please advise me (by return e-mail or otherwise) immediately and delete this e-mail. The contents of any attachment to this e-mail may contain software viruses or other defect which might affect your own computer system once received or opened. While companies under [Mega Bank] and its affiliates take reasonable precautions to minimize that risk, we cannot accept liability or responsibility for any damage or loss which may occur or be sustained as a result of a software virus or other defect. You are responsible for virus checks before opening any attachment. (1 Comment |Comment on this)