Risk of a 'cold' hardly justifies ending handshakes

Category: Newspaper article

This story was published in 'The Ottawa Citizen' on Thursday, January 18, 2007


Re: Agency gives thumbs down to handshakes, Jan. 16.

The warning by Canada's Public Health Agency that we should abandon the traditional handshake to ward off possible contamination is plain silly. Handshakes (and kissing of the cheeks in some cultures) are a defining trait of what makes us human beings. Getting a cold is hardly reason to abandon such practices.

Perhaps the health agency would suggest that we should all touch elbows when greeting each other. As briefcases would fly, and groceries bags spill during this manoeuvre, we would all look like members of the "Ministry Of Silly Walks." This, of course, would be hilarious but hardly civilized.

Spam

Category: Newspaper article

Article sent to 'The Ottawa Citizen' on Jan 26, 2007

Every day I delete between 20 and 30 spam e-mails. I get everything from invitations to update my bank account information from a bank that I do no business with, to quick money schemes, to Viagra. Mostly I get the latter. If I ever considered taking even a fraction of the Viagra peddled in spam mail, I’d be writing this article from the moon.

The writing in most spam is gibberish. Spammers often use random bits of prose or graphics to get by spam filters. Since Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have found more ways to identify spam text, using pattern recognition software, most spammers have now turned to full graphics. Clicking on these graphics is a sure recipe for drastically increasing future spam.

The next step is for ISPs to develop character recognition within graphics. As spam has become a very costly and dangerous problem for unwary users, it is high time that ISPs resolve this problem. Optical Character Readers have been around for years. Surely it shouldn’t be a big leap for ISPs to develop spam filters for text hidden in graphics.

Maher Arar

Category: Newspaper article

Article sent to 'The Ottawa Citizen' on Jan 31, 2007

Letter writer Margaret Ellen Griffin says she might scream if she hears how Maher Arar has been hard done by and further adds that Mr. Arar doesn’t have visible physical wounds (to back up his claims of torture).

Good grief! Does the man have to stand naked for the world to see? Does Ms. Griffin not think that there are any number of Canadian officials who would have produced the damning evidence of his physical torture in their attempt to get redress from Syria and the United States?

Furthermore Ms. Griffin suggests Mr. Arar take the money and shut-up. I couldn’t disagree more. What Mr. Arar did was extraordinary. His unrelenting persistence in this matter is nothing short of heroic. We should all have Mr. Arar’s courage.

Dion Attack Ad

Category: Newspaper article

Article published in 'The Ottawa Citizen' on January 30, 2007.

Having seen the Conservative’s attack Ad against Stephane Dion for the first time last night I wish (in the words of Alistair Sim playing Scrooge) ‘that the pleasure had been indefinitely postponed’.

While watching the Ad I got the impression that the Conservatives were saying ‘Hey! Don’t look at us. These are Liberals bashing Liberals here.’

How dumb do the Conservatives think Canadians are? It seems they haven’t learned from the ‘Chretien facial palsy’ negative Ad fiasco.

American style attack Ads don’t bode well here. Better money would have been spent if the Conservatives had outlines their accomplishments during their tenure as minority government.

Cold Wars

Category: Humour

I wonder what a meeting between people from a planet where people are smug about not getting colds, and people from a planet where people have perpetual colds would sound like.

For the sake of this story let us call these two fictitious planets NHAC (Never Had A Cold) and PTK (Pass The Kleenex).

______________________________________________________

After years of aggression between these two planets a tentative truce is called and representatives from both planets meet on planet PTK.

Chairman (PTK) : Gentleben welcomb to the blanet Bass the Kleeneggs.

First speaker (PTK): Ib it drew that yourb beple hab neber had a code?

Second speaker (NHAC): Yes it’s true. Peble on our planet hab neber had a cold. Hee! Hee!

First speaker (PTK): Are you bocking be sir?

Second speaker (NHAC): Who be? bocking you? No not a doll. Hee! Hee!

First speaker (PTK): Bister Chairben boud you plebe adbise the spbeaker to resbeck brotocol.

Second speaker (NHAC): Mister Chairman. I was merely answering the spbeaker’s question. Hee! Hee!

Second Speaker (NHAC): feigning a gesture of concilition, but unable to restrain himself, says ‘Mister Chairman would you pass me the box of kleedex?’


Postscript: Light years away, an astronomer on Earth, having observed unusual flare-ups in a remote constellation over the past few weeks, calls a colleague over and says, “It looks like planets ‘NHAC’ and ‘PTK’ have blown each other up.

He’s Dead Jim!

Category: Humour

I used to love watching Star Trek with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and the rest of the crew. The show was formulaic which lent much of its appeal for me.

You could always expect Dr. McCoy to say ‘Dammit Jim I’m a doctor not a scientist/or a biologist/or a mechanic!’ or some such disclaimer.

You always knew that the beginning of a seductive soundtrack meant that Captain Kirk was about to romance a pretty lady.

In battle you always waited for Kirk’s smile as he wiped blood from his lip, (a move popularized by Bruce Lee) after being punched, then enter hand-to-hand combat with great glee.

My favorite was the appearance of an ensign wearing either a red or an orange long-sleeved T-Shirt that may as well have ‘Dead Man’ written on it. Invariably he was killed then McCoy (Bones) would say ‘He’s dead Jim’.

There was always a situation where Kirk had to be beamed back aboard the Starship Enterprise quickly due some imminent danger ‘Mister Scott beam me up’. Then Mister Scott would invariably reply ‘Captain I can nay go any faster! The Dilithium crystals can nay take much more!’. To which a visibly sweaty Kirk would reply ‘Mister Scott I suggest you beam me up now!’

I also loved how, when the crew was in battle, the men standing up would be thrown first to the left and then to the right across the bridge and those sitting down would tilt their torsos to the left then to the right as photon torpedoes exploded near the ship (always near - never hitting the ship).

At some point in the show Spock would rid himself of his captor by saying something like 'Pardon me but you have a multi-legged creature on your shoulder!' When the happless guard looked down at his shoulder Spock would administer the Vulcan nerve pinch.

On Star Trek all alien forms spoke English without the aid of a babelfish (that extremely useful tool used in ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’).

Also the environment on the planets they beamed down to was invariably oxygen rich. Despite this, while examining a stange life form, Bones would invariably say 'It's life Jim, but not as we know it'.

Gotta love it. Beam me up Scotty!

Grounds for divorce

Category: Humour

Having always considered myself the Pun-Meister I had to relinquish the crown to my wife after the following incident that happened many years ago.

I was supposed to meet my wife at an appointed time in a shopping Plaza off Merivale Road in Ottawa and I was late. When I arrived she started blasting me for making her wait. It was one of these miserable wet days where everything goes wrong.

We decided to leave the car there and walk across Merivale road to a grocery store on the other side. As we walked, and after I ran out of excuses for being late, and had repeatedly asked my wife if she wanted a divorce, my wife responded 'No!' in an unconvincing tone.

Now we were nearing a row of stacked shopping carts near the entrance of the grocery store.

After asking one last time 'Do you want a divorce?' my wife, still leaving me hanging, and anxious to get the shopping over with, says: 'No. We'll talk about this later. Let's get the cart before divorce.'

24

Category: Humour

This week’s Season 6 of the hit TV show 24 featured notables such as Kal Penn (Harold of ‘Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle’) and Shaun Majumder of ‘This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ (who also acted as Kumar’s brother in White Castle) who play terrorists.

Majumder plays a key terrorist captive released with a number of other terrorists by order of President Wayne Palmer to appease a master terrorist called Fayed.

Judging by the number of terrorists released, and Majunders short appearance on the show, I was torn between calling this episode ‘This Hour has 22 Muslims’ or ‘This Role has 22 Minutes’.

Counting the number of Canadian actors on the show (excluding Kal Penn who is an American), and witnessing the spectacular Nuclear explosion that closed the show, I started wondering if the plot revolved around the Canadian movie industry trying to blow up California to make way for Tinseltown North. My wife (ever the practical one) suggested that the detonation of the Nuclear device in California probably was an attempt to pre-empt the upcoming Nuclear explosion from the Season Premiere of Heroes starting Monday Jan 22.

Humm! Verrry Interesting!