This is a bit too long to post in full, and obviously I believe bloggers should get the traffic and credit they deserve, so you can read the whole story here at “Japan Probe.”
It’s a remarkably similar version of DisneyLand, undeniably similar in fact. Except Donald Duck is pregnant and Mickey Mouse is actually an estranged feline.
I want to nominate this as “The Biggest Bootleg Ever”.
Mark
Given all the tyrants, despots and evil bastards to populate this planet and our history, you may be wondering who the worst Canadian (a land of super nice people) was… Now they’re trying to find out.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – A Canadian history magazine plans to highlight how a country stereotyped for its polite and somewhat boring citizenry is also home to its share of scoundrels through a survey seeking “the worst Canadian.”
“Our international reputation has us as this very nice, quiet, friendly place,” said Deborah Morrison, president of Canada’s National History Society, which publishes The Beaver magazine.
“We thought it would be fun to show people our seamier side and take a look at some of our more villainous characters, and how they’ve helped to shape our country,” Morrison said.
So far, visitors to the magazine’s Web site at http://www.thebeaver.ca have nominated pop singers like Celine Dion and Shania Twain as well as criminals and prime ministers, she said.
But she said currently in the lead is “somebody only Canadians could know and hate:” the late Harold Ballard, former owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.
“We take our hockey very seriously,” Morrison said.
Ballard, a self-described misanthropic “miserable old bastard” was loathed by fans and served time in jail for fraud and tax evasion.
The magazine’s August 1 issue will publish poll results for “Canada’s most foul, useless, maligning and destructive human forces” as well as more rigorous opinions from historians and Canadian writers, she said.
Morrison said the magazine cribbed the idea from BBC History Magazine, whose readers chose serial killer Jack the Ripper as the worst Briton in history in a 2005 poll.
Well, if the worst they have is a Hockey Team Owner who served jail time for fraud, it seems like their plan is going to completely backfire.
In the US some of our celebrities/heroes are arrested for fraud! Look at Martha Stewart, she’s just as big a home-making idol as she was before. Whoever the Canadians come up with as their national villain, there’s no way it could compete with the villains of history (Hitler, Genghis Kahn, and a lot more) and no way it could compare with most notorious Americans… Not even Shania Twain or Celine Dion can match the evil, hypocritical and disruptive nature of someone mild like Ted Haggard.
It would be funny if Celine Dion won of course, or if some random guy like “the egregious knitter” (a guy who steals balls of thread for knitting – made up) would be funny too.
Hell, if the worst they have is a tax evading hockey team owner, I’m moving up there.
Mark
Attack of the killer wifi peripherals!
Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb?
It’s on every high street and in every coffee shop and school. But experts have serious concerns about the effects of electronic smog from wireless networks linking our laptops and mobiles, reports Geoffrey Lean
Published: 22 April 2007
Being “wired-up” used to be shorthand for being at the cutting edge, connected to all that is cool. No longer. Wireless is now the only thing to be.
Go into a Starbucks, a hotel bar or an airport departure lounge and you are bound to see people tapping away at their laptops, invisibly connected to the internet. Visit friends, and you are likely to be shown their newly installed system.
Lecture at a university and you’ll find the students in your audience tapping away, checking your assertions on the world wide web almost as soon as you make them. And now the technology is spreading like a Wi-Fi wildfire throughout Britain’s primary and secondary schools.
The technological explosion is even bigger than the mobile phone explosion that preceded it. And, as with mobiles, it is being followed by fears about its effect on health – particularly the health of children. Recent research, which suggests that the worst fears about mobiles are proving to be justified, only heightens concern about the electronic soup in which we are increasingly spending our lives.
Now, as we report today, Sir William Stewart (pictured below right), the man who has issued the most authoritative British warnings about the hazards of mobiles, is becoming worried about the spread of Wi-Fi. The chairman of the Health Protection Agency – and a former chief scientific adviser to the Government – is privately pressing for an official investigation of the risks it may pose.
Health concerns show no sign of slowing the wireless expansion. One in five of all adult Britons now own a wireless-enabled laptop. There are 35,000 public hotspots where they can use them, usually at a price.
In the past 18 months 1.6 million Wi-Fi terminals have been sold in Britain for use in homes, offices and a host of other buildings. By some estimates, half of all primary schools and four fifths of all secondary schools have installed them.
Whole cities are going wireless. First up is the genteel, almost bucolic, burgh of Norwich, which has installed a network covering almost the whole of its centre, spanning a 4km radius from City Hall. It takes in key sites further away, including the University of East Anglia and a local hospital, and will be expanded to take in rural parts of the south of the county.
More than 200 small aerials were attached to lamp posts to create the network, which anyone can use free for an hour. There is nothing to stop the 1,000 people who use it each day logging off when their time is up, and logging on again for another costless session.
“We wanted to see if something like this could be done,” says Anne Carey, the network’s project manager. “People are using it and finding it helpful. It is, I think, currently the largest network of its kind.”
Not for much longer. Brighton plans to launch a city-wide network next year, and Manchester is planning one covering over 400 square miles, providing free access to 2.2 million people.
So far only a few, faint warnings have been raised, mainly by people who are so sensitised to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobiles, their masts and Wi-Fi that they become ill in its presence. The World Health Organisation estimates that up to three out of every hundred people are “electrosensitive” to some extent. But scientists and doctors – and some European governments – are adding their voices to the alarm as it becomes clear that the almost universal use of mobile phones may be storing up medical catastrophe for the future.
A recent authoritative Finnish study has found that people who have used mobiles for more than ten years are 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side of the head as they hold their handset; Swedish research suggests that the risk is almost four times as great. And further research from Sweden claims that the radiation kills off brain cells, which could lead to today’s younger generation going senile in their forties and fifties.
Professor Lawrie Challis, who heads the Government’s official mobile safety research, this year said that the mobile could turn out to be “the cigarette of the 21st century”.
There has been less concern about masts, as they emit very much less radiation than mobile phones. But people living – or attending schools – near them are consistently exposed and studies reveal a worrying incidence of symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizziness and memory problems. There is also some suggestion that there may be an increase in cancers and heart disease.
Wi-Fi systems essentially take small versions of these masts into the home and classroom – they emit much the same kind of radiation. Though virtually no research has been carried out, campaigners and some scientists expect them to have similar ill-effects. They say that we are all now living in a soup of electromagnetic radiation one billion times stronger than the natural fields in which living cells have developed over the last 3.8 billion years. This, they add, is bound to cause trouble
Prof Leif Salford, of Lund University – who showed that the radiation kills off brain cells – is also deeply worried about wi-fi’s addition to “electronic smog”.
There is particular concern about children partly because they are more vulnerable – as their skulls are thinner and their nervous systems are still developing – and because they will be exposed to more of the radiation during their lives.
The Austrian Medical Association is lobbying against the deployment of Wi-Fi in schools. The authorities of the province of Salzburg has already advised schools not to install it, and is now considering a ban. Dr Gerd Oberfeld, Salzburg’s head of environmental health and medicine, says that the Wi-Fi is “dangerous” to sensitive people and that “the number of people and the danger are both growing”.
In Britain, Stowe School removed Wi-Fi from part of its premises after a classics master, Michael Bevington – who had taught there for 28 years – developed headaches and nausea as soon as it was installed.
Ian Gibson, the MP for the newly wireless city Norwich is calling for an official inquiry into the risks of Wi-Fi. The Professional Association of Teachers is to write to Education Secretary Alan Johnson this week to call for one.
Philip Parkin, the general secretary of the union, says; “I am concerned that so many wireless networks are being installed in schools and colleges without any understanding of the possible long-term consequences.
“The proliferation of wireless networks could be having serious implications for the health of some staff and pupils without the cause being recognised.”
But, he added, there are huge commercial pressures” which may be why there has not yet been “any significant action”.
Guidelines that were ignored
The first Stewart Report, published in May 2000, produced a series of sensible recommendations. They included: discouraging children from using mobiles, and stopping the industry from promoting them to the young; publicising the radiation levels of different handsets so that customers could choose the lowest; making the erection of phone masts subject to democratic control through the planning system; and stopping the building of masts where the radiation “beam of greatest intensity” fell on schools, unless the school and parents agreed.
The Government accepted most of these recommendations, but then, as ‘The Independent on Sunday’ has repeatedly pointed out, failed to implement them. Probably, it has lost any chance to curb the use of mobiles by children and teenagers. Since the first report, mobile use by the young has doubled.
Has anybody ever read Stephen King’s “Cell”? About the zombies (of sorts) that are created by a pulse sent via cell phones. Well if you haven’t, go read it. Then be afraid of the coming zombie apocalypse. Be very afraid!
Mark
I found this story from the Foreign Policy blog, and it links to this BBC article:
‘Talking’ CCTV scolds offenders
“Talking” CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.
Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should be “very careful” over the cameras.
An example of how talking cameras work
Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, “in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions”.
“But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can’t go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people,” he added.
What really upsets people is their night out being destroyed or their environment being destroyed by a fairly small minority of people
John Reid
The talking cameras did not constitute “secret surveillance”, he said.
“It’s very public, it’s interactive.”
Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.
Downing Street’s “respect tsar”, Louise Casey, said the cameras “nipped problems in the bud” and reduced bureaucracy.
“It gets across the message, ‘please don’t litter our streets because someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again’,” she told BBC News.
“Half a billion pounds a year is spent picking up litter.”
‘Scarecrow policing’
Mr Brokenshire told the BBC he had a number of concerns about the use of the talking cameras.
“Whether this is moving down a track of almost ‘scarecrow’ policing rather than real policing – actually insuring that we have more bobbies on the beat – I think that’s what we really want to see, albeit that an initiative like this may be an effective tool in certain circumstances.
“We need to be very careful about applying this more generally.”
The talking cameras will be installed in Southwark, Barking and Dagenham, in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Stuart, Dunstable
In Middlesbrough, staff in a control centre monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.
Local councillor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and criminal damage and cut litter levels.
“Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town centre is a safe place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is safe,” he said.
But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: “Apart from being absurd, I think it’s rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from who? Who sets these cameras up?”
There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain.
A recent study by the government’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a “surveillance society”.
Now as Orwellian and foreboding as this is, I still think it would be fun to be the guy on the microphone watching the camera. “Hey, jackass with the stupid looking yellow hat, yeah you. Stop leaving your shit on the floor, clean it up!”
All kinds of potential for fun and abuse. =P
Mark
CCTV in action 
Funny Stuff in the News! 