Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

Patriot Act abuse: couple being overtly sexual on a plane have been charged under the Patriot Act. WTF?

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:59:50 -0800

THIS is the reason you don't allow overly broad stupid legislation like the Patriot Acts I and II and the most recent Military Commission Act to pass. They are always unintended uses that far exceed the original intent of the law. In this case, a couple in their mid-forties were being overtly sexual on a Southwest Airlines flight and have been charged under the Patriot Act (which was designed as a tool to charge terrorists.)

What a joke. Why are Americans putting up with this? WAKE UP. Unbelievable.

I mean, don't get me wrong. They should have been hauled off the plane if he was threatening the staff, but charge them with mischief, not under the fracking terrorism act.

Craig Ferguson had a funny episode on this story: "When the other passengers saw these goings-on, they were surprised and thought....'What, entertainment on a Southwest Airlines flight?'" Funny. But not.

President Bush has signed into law the complete destruction of Writ of Habeus Corpus - the U.S. govt can now put legally put anybody in jail and hold them there indefinitely. 200 years of Constitutional protection gone.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:47:16 -0700

Ben Franklin said it best: "Those who would trade liberty for a bit of safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

This is appalling.

I urge everybody to watch this:

Quieting our cities: Do they make electro magnetic pulse generators that are small enough to aim at a Harley?

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:57:42 -0700

I would like to offer up a business idea to an enterprising young engineering student. Develop something that operates a bit like a speeding ticket camera but that is for sound level instead. Build it so that it can sit in intersections and detect noise levels of Harley Davidsons and other bikes with modified exhausts that are so f**king loud that they echo throughout the entire downtown core at all hours of the day and night. When it senses a burst of motorcycle revving, it will send a very targeted Electro magnetic pulse blast at the bike, knocking out the electrical system on the bike. Voila. Peace and quiet and one more bike that is inoperable. If you put this on a drone balloon hovering over the city, you could also use it to detect and knock out boom box cars!

Hate noise? Check out http://www.noiseoff.org

Why is $10/gallon gas a great thing? And what does it have to do with evolution, adaptation, and local economic growth? Everything.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 10 May 2006 10:10:00 -0700

I think I have found the magic number. Every fifth article from Mark Morford is so brilliant, insightful, and articulate that I need to post most, if not all, of it here for my readers. Today is the day for another.

In one fell swoop, Mark has managed to hit on a whole bunch of my favourite subjects: the environment, structure driving behaviour, adaptation, complex system effects, social policy, cultural behaviour, global policy....he has hit it all.

The archive of his writings can be found here. The current article is below:

Bring On The $6 Gallon Of Gas
It would revolutionize America. It would make us all better humans. But could you handle it?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree?

Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV owners. Everyone else, 10 bucks a gallon, across the board. Eleven for premium.

It would take some finessing. Maybe also give a price break to some truckers and trucking companies (so vital to the overall economy), but not so much to global delivery companies (FedEx, DSL et al.), because not doing so would force them to raise shipping rates and force you (and me) to reconsider buying everything online and hence will encourage you to shop locally once again, thus reviving a stagnant local economy.

Voilá -- gas crisis, oil crisis, warmongering agenda, pollution issues, road rage, traffic congestion, urban decay, oil profiteering -- all completely almost totally somewhat solved. Or at the very least, dramatically, gloriously shifted toward ... I don't know what. Something better. Something more humane, less greedy, more sustainable. Could it work? How outraged and indignant would you be to have to pay that much for gas? How long would that feeling last?

Take it one logical step further. Set up a national system whereby if you want to buy a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg in the city, you pay a $1,000 Global Warming Surcharge and that money goes straight to a local organic farm, or school, or environmental think tank. And if it gets under 12 mpg, make it three grand, plus a slap to your face from a small, angry child. Got yourself a shiny new Hummer? You pay five grand extra, you can only buy gas once a month and all the truly beautiful women of the world will shun you like Charlie Sheen (oh wait, that already happens). See? Revolution is easy.

What, too far fetched? Too implausible? Not at all. Sure, 10 bucks a gallon would be extremely painful for a while. Citizens would wail. Commuters would scream and stomp and die. But then we would do what we always do. We would evolve. Adapt. Systems would quickly transform, habits would instantly shift. It would be easier to implement than the goddamn mess that is Medicare reform, far easier than Lots of Children Left Behind, more viable and livable than the toxic existence of Homeland Security and the disgusting Patriot Act.

But of course such an idea is also, right now, absolutely impossible. It will never happen -- not 10 bucks, not six, not even a buck more per gallon -- and not just because no politician anywhere on either side of the aisle has the nerve to come out and suggest that Americans might actually need to drive less and conserve and make a change in their gluttonous habits. This is, of course, absolute death for a politician. Tell Americans what to do? Dare to suggest that they're doing something wrong, or that their behaviors are dangerous and destructive and irresponsible? Are you insane? This is America! We're flawless!

No, the primary reason such reform won't happen is because, simply put, we are the most entitled nation in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy. Americans are trained from birth to believe we deserve as much as we desire of every exploitable resource on the planet, be it water or natural gas or oil, coal or salmon or steaks, Big Macs or diapers or iPods or bizarre varieties of blue ketchup. It is, in a word, perilous. It is also, in another, slightly more devastating word, our downfall.

Look, I adore cars. I adore driving and I cherish open roads and smooth horsepower and a musical exhaust note and I fully believe most German automotive engineers should be sent gifts of candy and Peet's coffee and porn. I would, like most everyone else, be absolutely loathe to give much of it up.

But you know what? Big freaking deal. I could learn to live without so much. I like to think I would be able to step back and see the bigger picture, realize what is and isn't absolutely essential, what does and does not absolutely define my identity and my life, modify accordingly and laugh/shrug/sigh it off in the process. In other words, I could make it work. And so could you.

Ever been in a citywide blackout? One that lasted for more than a few hours and stretched on into the night? Ever see people suddenly shift gears and become astoundingly helpful and polite and sharing? Happens in a matter of moments. Disasters do it. Katrina did it, on a scale we haven't seen in years. Sept. 11 did it, emotionally speaking, before BushCo whored that tragedy and turned it into the most vile political poker chip in American history. Shocking change brings people together. Brings out the best in humans. Or at least, makes you rethink what's truly important in your life.

Another example: You know what would happen if guns -- all guns, everywhere -- were banned outright tomorrow? Well, right off, nothing much. Criminals would still commit crimes. Lawsuits would skyrocket. The NRA would shoot itself in the face in screaming protest. Crime rates would dance all over the map. It would be a little ugly.

But then something remarkable would happen. Over a short blip of time -- say about 10 or 20 years, as gun manufacturing ceased and the culture of gun violence died down and our favorite death object was less visible in the news and in video games and on TV and in every aspect of modern life, well, guess what? Guns would begin to disappear. From the culture, from the drug dealers, from the streets, from public consciousness. They would turn into a sad relic, like eight-track tapes, like the bubonic plague, like the Miami Sound Machine. Think 20 years is too long? BS. It is but an eyeblink, a twitch, a faint toe spasm in the great long orgasm of time.

This is the unappreciated, under-reported magic of the human animal. We are infinitely adaptable. We can accommodate far more than politicians and pundits and the morally knotted Christian right would ever have you believe.

Ten bucks a gallon. Imagine the mad scramble by carmakers to invent new ultra-gas-sipping, enviro-friendly technologies. Imagine communities coming together for ride-sharing and mass transit. Bike sales would skyrocket. Walking shoes would be the new bling item. We would mourn the loss of cool car culture even as we celebrated the birth of, say, moped culture. Telecommuting would explode. Sure, the superrich would still tool around in their bloated Escalades, oblivious to the world around them, thinkin' the world is their dumb bitch.

So what? The rest of us can simply roll our eyes and laugh, evolve and sharpen and sigh, and wonder what great change we can embark upon next.

Earth Day and President Bush talks about the environment. Shockingly, lighting did not strike him dead on the spot.

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 08:28:03 -0700

Another brilliant rant from Mark Morford. See the full article here.

Excerpts below:

Look, see those tire marks? That ungainly footprint? Feel that breath of humid doom upon your skin? Yes, the president was just here. Up in Napa Valley, riding his official Trek Mountain Bike One over the rocks and down the trails and through the cool California mud, a small army of handlers and Secret Service agents and emergency medical personnel by his side and/or rumbling along behind him in big black SUVs. It was very cute, in a fingernail-yanked-with-pliers sort of way.

It was Earth Day weekend. The president talked about how mountain biking helped him "settle his soul" and "burn off excess energy when you're living life to its fullest," which apparently means blindly running your nation into a bloody flaming wall at full speed like a drunk NASCAR driver on Ambien. He talked about how he enjoyed mountain biking because it had such minimal impact on the pristine, wild surroundings. Shockingly, lightning did not strike him dead on the spot.

Later on, the prez talked up the need for wildly implausible hydrogen-powered cars to the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a group who, if they had a drop of integrity and brains among them, didn't believe a single word he said.

[...] This much we know: Bush is, it has been widely noted, the worst environmental president in modern America history. He has done more to eliminate protections and pollute the air, sell off national forests, whore the waterways, drill for oil and eviscerate pollution regulation than any president on the books. His environmental record is abysmal, shameful, and includes installing two of the worst secretaries of the interior in history, the abominable Gale Norton and now her male counterpart Dirk Kempthorne, who have turned around and reduced protections and sold off more forestland to private concerns -- oil, timber, coal, you name it -- since the Harding administration.

[...] Bush is, after all, a failed oilman. He has done all he can to ensure we will be dependent on the black death for the next two decades, minimum, which is, not surprisingly, the average remaining life span of his favoritest CEO cronies in the oil business. Serve the masters first, the Saudi sheiks second, the American people about, oh, 157th. It is the BushCo way.

[...] There is no beauty in American political policy toward the Earth. There is no poetry or grace or true heart in how politicians -- especially Republican politicians -- view our natural commodities, no respect unless it is based on fear, unless it is begrudging and resentful, like when a hurricane makes a mockery of the president's feeble and unconvincing attempts to prove he cares. Has it always been this way? Maybe. But some leaders are far, far worse than others.

This is perhaps the most frightening thing about the Bush visit, about him having the nerve, the sheer vulgar gall to discuss the quality of his soul while biking through a natural habitat his administration so violently works to defile. It is this: He actually meant it. Bush was probably genuinely heartfelt about enjoying his ride through our troubled trees. He thinks he is attuned and connected. He thinks nature is nifty and calming. And, simply put, there is no more dangerous a leader on the face of the earth who, in every policy and every law and every action, abuses and distorts and molests the world around him, and yet who can turn on an ideological dime and calmly glorify that very thing which he helps destroy.

Recall former Spokane Mayor Jim West, big scandal just recently, an outspoken and homophobic über-Republican on the outside, a guy who helped pass anti-gay legislation in Washington state and railed against gay rights in public, but who happily turned around and for over 20 years solicited 18-year-old boys in gay chat rooms at night and offered them free candy, T-shirts, sex, jobs. Bush is just like that. Abuse your issue openly during the day, screw it at night. And worst of all, give not a single thought to the brutal dichotomy.

[...]

Full article is here.

The First Annual "30 days of sustainability" has launched in Vancouver!

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:13:11 -0800

(If you are looking for the 2007 event information, please click HERE.)

I am very excited about our launch of the 30 Days of Sustainability. For the month of March, Vancouver will host a cornucopia of events and activities, all focused around bringing sustainability to our lives and our city.

One key component of the 30 Days of Sustainability is a dynamic, interactive website, which also launched on March 2nd, 2006. To learn more about the 30 Days, check out http://www.30daysofsustainability.com.

Special features of the website include:

a comprehensive event calendar, listing the dozens of workshops, sustainability cafes, speakers, and so much more taking place through the 30 Days;
a collection of photographs that will be taken by attendees at events all month;
A What's New section that lists all of the news updates;
an interactive 30 Questions section, where a new question will be posted each day, and the public will have the chance, along with our panel of sustainability experts, to discuss actionable things we can do to advance sustainability.

This website is our primary tool for getting the word out about all the exciting events taking place this month. Please take a minute to forward it far and wide to your sustainability / environmental / social change networks, and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks so much!

Please go and vote for our Web 2.0 Manifesto over at ChangeThis!

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:00:54 -0700

Some friends and I decided that we want to write a Web 2.0 manifesto over at ChangeThis. We submitted our proposal to the ChangeThis team and they accepted!

So now we need you to go over and vote for us on this page!

Here is the summary of the proposal:

There is a change occurring on the internet and it is called Web 2.0. It is already beginning to transform the way we connect, collaborate, create and communicate. It allows people to work together across time and space. It allows machines to read. It is the manifestation of six degrees of separation, a way in which we can see the weak links that hold our networks of networks together. Everybody who uses the internet for business, non-profit, government operations or pleasure needs to know how it works because it allows people to communicate more easily with their network, experience faster feedback loops, collaborate more effectively, and work in ways that were not possible before. Our manifesto trumpets the arrival of this evolution of the internet, weighs the benefits of moving and the risks of staying on web 1.0, articulates the principles underlying this paradigm shift, provides resources for further exploration, and calls all readers to begin making their own transition. We will also explore the hype factor and talk about the current investment atmosphere in this area.

Please forward this to anybody you know who can assist us. If enough votes come in, they will then take the polling page down and notify us that the manifesto is a go.

Then comes the hard part - we have to write it!! Luckily we're part of the way there already.

Once it is written, they choose whether or not to finally accept it and publish it as a Manifesto.

Thanks for the help everybody!

P.S. To those of you who voted for my last manifesto back in December 2004, thank you. It never went in because after they accepted it, they sent the submission rules and the rule 1 was "It shouldn't be angry." Given that my Technology Buyer's Manifesto was like one big Dennis Miller rant, it would have had to have been completely re-done from the ground up and I didn't have time what with the new job and everything. So here goes try #2, this time with the help of my friends. In fact, they were the inspiration for it since they got me into all of this stuff to begin with!

Celebrated authors of "The Frog and Prince" - one of the best networking books in the world - expand to the United States with their new release "Work the Pond". I highly recommend this.

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 14:01:39 -0700

Back in 2003, I attended a pivotal event at the Vancouver Enterprise Forum. Normally, these events generally follow a predictable pattern. People fill in the room, buy a drink and wander aimlessly. The venture capitalists avoid the nervous entrepreneurs with the bad pitches and the keen students stand nervously in the corner, not sure who to talk to. Old friends meet up and chat and newcomers do their best to try to look as comfortable as the old-timers.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is not a comment on the Vancouver Enterprise Forum, which does a great job of bringing these people together time and time again. It is a comment on the state of networking generally in this city, if not the western world.

But that evening was different. Darcy Rezac, Managing Director of the Vancouver Board of Trade, got on stage with a microphone, introduced himself, gave the group some ground rules and "permission to network".

Some of his rules included:

* it's about them, not you - find out what you can do for the other person;
* put your name tag on your upper right chest so that when you shake hands, the other person can see your name tag;
* invite others into your group and make the introductions so that people feel comfortable;
* look the other people in the eye - focus on them, and not on the venture capitalist walking by that you REALLY wanted to talk to;
* keep your cards handy in one pocket and use another pocket to store the cards you receive;
* when you offer a card, make sure you get the other person's card
* try to get 7 cards minimum per event that you attend
* give yourself permission to go out and meet people so that you can see how you can help them.

The energy that this talk unleashed was enormous. People laughed and chatted and exchanged cards. In fact, it was hard to shepherd them out of the room to the upstairs theater for the actual talk! This evening was a turning point in my own understanding of networking and I will always remember it. I bought Darcy's first book "The Frog and the Prince" that night from Gayle and read it that night.

Well, I'm pleased to report that Darcy Rezac, Judy Thomson, and Gayle Hallgren-Rezac are at it again and are releasing "Work the Pond - Use the Power of Positive Networking to Leap Forward in Business and in Life" on October 4, 2005.

No matter what you do - business, government, or non-profit work - if you need to work with people and build out your eco-system of "weak links", you need to read this book. I highly recommend it.

Congratulations Darcy, Judy, and Gayle!

Mark Morford does it (yet) again: SpongeBob square pants is in cahoots with Bob the Builder to promote the gay agenda, while Bush asks for $80B more for his war on Islam and the Church continues to promote disease and unwanted births over contraception

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 10:25:34 -0800

Only Mark Morford can put all of this into one article and tie it all together so well. Excerpts below. The link to the left takes you to the full article at SF Gate.

...James Dobson, the cute little founder of the cute little ultraconservative rabidly Christian happily neo-homophobic Focus on the Family, actually stood up and proclaimed, to the media, to the world, with a straight face, with no sense of irony or shuddering humiliation or an overpowering sense that he was, in fact, contributing quite nicely to the overall violent oatmealy ignorance of the planet, came right out and announced that the wildly popular and much-loved SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon character is, actually and truly, probably gay. And therefore, of course, SpongeBob is a dire threat to all childrenkind and must be avoided at all costs lest the wee ones watch the cartoons and become overwhelmed with a mad desire to wax their chests and buy a new Miata and drink cocktails made with lemonade. More or less.

And why? Why is the adorable yellow sea sponge suddenly considered to be contributing to the mental and spiritual and genital degradation of millions of innocent children? Because he's a hyperactive none-too-bright short-attention-spanned spazzball of lovable non-sequiturial nonsense who induces rabid devotion among children and gay men and straight adults alike? Why, no. Not quite.

It's because the frantically animated sea creature is now appearing, alongside noted pagan cartoon perverts Barney the Dinosaur and Winnie-the-Pooh and the Rugrats and Bob the Builder, in a nonprofit video sent to 60,000 schools and designed to promote that vile demon called, ahem, tolerance. And diversity.

...But now, the not-so-cute part: Much like that other small-minded cluster of clenched nonbrains over at the Parents Television Council, the very tiny but weirdly vocal group that single-handedly managed to hurl the FCC into fits of hysteria regarding naughty swearwords and exposed nipples in the national media, these groups are having one helluva moment right now, one influential and dangerous time in the cultural limelight.

These are the minuscule and shrill groups that, perhaps in a period not seen since the Puritans forbade dancing and kissing and the color fuchsia and all pleasure of any kind, have a shockingly powerful pull on American society and who reputedly helped tilt the election toward Bush and who increasingly have the ear of Congress -- a Congress, it must be noted, that's increasingly crammed with evangelical Christians and homophobic nutjobs and Tom DeLay.

...All of which somehow reminds me of the Spanish Catholic Archdiocese, also recently in the news after undergoing an amazing spasm of lucid awareness in how, for a brief blip in time, the church officially allowed that condoms might be OK. Did you read that story? About how Bishop Juan Antonio Martinez Camin, in Spain, announced that condoms are actually pretty good for, you know, controlling disease and inhibiting the spread of HIV? Miss that one? It's understandable. Went by pretty fast. In fact, the astounding stance lasted exactly 24 hours, just enough time for the Vatican to get a whiff of it and for the Vatican's Archbishop of Hateful Sexless Myopia to make a nasty phone call to Spain, promptly threatening the Spanish church with nothing short of castration and excommunication and genital warts.

Whoops, nope, we were wrong, muttered the Spanish church the following day. Condoms were evil all along. Condoms are wrong and condoms don't actually prevent the spread of HIV and we don't care if they save lives or prevent pregnancy or STDs because condoms promote -- what is it again, cardinal? -- oh, yes, "immoral sexual conduct."

...Which in turn reminds me of Bush addressing a cluster of antichoice activists a few days back, touting the vicious and degrading "culture of life," which translates directly as, "We aging sexless white Christian males shall hereby stop at nothing to slap women's rights back to 1955 and chip away at female procreative choice, all while preventing stem-cell research from ever saving the life of a single cancer or Alzheimer's patient. God bless." Ah, progress. And then, in the next ironic breath, Bush announced that his warmongering administration is ready to request another $80 billion from Congress to further the violent and treasonous and unwinnable war on Islami-- er, on non-Christia-- er, women-- er, gays-- er, decent grammar-- er, dictators who control our oil-- er, "terror."

...Note the connection. Note the blood-red thread of fear and dread and homophobia, the brutal irony throughout all these stories. Shrill extremist sects and small-minded leaders with too much control, saddled with self-righteous and outdated doctrines that refuse to allow the culture to progress, to laugh, to moan in joy and sticky happiness. Note the people who look at hilarious children's cartoons and see only sinister mind control, who look at their fellow human souls and see only an army of debauched heathens, who look (reluctantly) at their own genitals and see only a gnarled clump of pain and confusion, who look up at the beautiful blue sky and see only a massive canopy of daggers.

How incredibly sad. And, for right now, how very, insidiously dangerous.

44% of Amerikans think that Muslim-Americans should have restricted rights. What a surprise. This must be counteracted by sane people everywhere

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:36:10 -0800

A Cornell university study has found that 44% of Amerikans favoured "some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans." But remember George Bush, "this is not a war of Christian against Muslim or Westerners against Easterners, it is a war on terror." Umm, yeah, right. Shockingly, those who were most inclined to vote this way were either Republican or "more religious." Given that the local Muslims were probably not voting for their own civil liberties curtailment (but then again who knows? The Christians have certainly agreed to it), I am guessing that the "religious" people in question were the more fundamentalist Christians.

QUOTE

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

UNQUOTE

The original Cornell press release link is here.

Currently listening to (ironically) Robin S - Show Me Love (Stonebridge mix) from the album "Club Sounds Vol. 27 CD2"

(Thanks to William Gibson's blog for the link)

Fortress Amerika continued: John Perry Barlow takes on the US govt for illegal mission drift on Fourth Amendment searches

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:14:57 -0800

Read it and weep, my Amerikan friends. And support the EFF.

QUOTE

December 10, 2004

A Taste of the System

02:07 AM | Current Affairs/ Drugs/ Politics

Since the election, as you've doubtless noticed, I haven't had much to say here.

Having lost that crusade - and I do think we lost, election skullduggery notwithstanding - I have been quietly gathering myself up for the countless smaller contests arrayed before us that, taken collectively, will determine the future of freedom in America. We can't afford to lose many of those, and we will have to emulate our authoritarian adversaries' disciplined resolve if we are are to prevail.

As it happens, I am already personally engaged in one of these battles, and it has been testing my resolve for over a year. Now that it seems to be coming to a head, I want to tell you about it. My own liberty is at stake, but so, I think, is the liberty of anyone who wishes to travel in America without fear of humiliation or arrest.

On September 15, 2003, shortly after Burning Man, I was hauled off an airplane that was about to depart San Francisco for New York and charged with the misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that had allegedly been discovered during a search of my checked baggage.

I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to relate this event. Embarrassment certainly played no part. Generally, I like to be fully disclosed, no matter how far I may wander beyond the normative fringe. I suppose that, for legal reasons, I wanted to avoid any apparent admission of guilt, and only now do I realize that it's possible to tell this tale without making one. This is because, in most cases - and this is almost certainly one of them - contraband that is illegally discovered does not legally exist. If that seems a technicality to you, you may want to re-read the 4th Amendment, as well as the subsequent case law (notably Mapp v. Ohio) which sets forth the "exclusionary rule." However shredded by the War on Some Drugs, the 4th Amendment remains part of the Constitution. In order to see that it goes on meaning something, I decided to fight this charge and have spent the last 14 months doing so.

Now I will tell you my story.

UNQUOTE

Canada goes to hell! Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal Healthcare? (from Mark Morford)

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:49:45 -0800

Many of you know that one of my favourite columnists is Mark Morford, who writes for the San Francisco Gate news. This is this weeks rant on Canada's policies versus those of his own government. It's a fantastic read and nice to see that at least one American is aware of what is going on outside of his country. I have posted the entire article below because it is so brilliant but it is also available on Mark's archive over here.

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north?

Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations?

Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada's place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic epicenter of all known hell.

It's true. It's rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in Canada very soon. It's been oddly ignored in much of the U.S. media and hasn't really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what's wrong with those freakin' Canadians?

I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports and manly hunting. Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and plentiful water up there? Something to do with those weird French-esque people in Quebec, maybe?

I knew we should've been paying more attention to that border! Didn't I say so, honey? Didn't I say we should keep an eye on those northern weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized pot and sort of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for Ontario, George, I say!

Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants, of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you ask).

All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday. Heathens!

It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now has legal pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system. They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.

What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren't they scared to death like whiny red-state Americans? Why don't they want to kill each other along with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and cheap beer and yummy poutine?

Aren't they aware of what's happening in the world? Don't they know they are openly hated for their freedoms and their cafés and their vinegared french fries? Aren't they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states. How confused and irritated you must be.

After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens' civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

Yes yes, I know, Canada's universal health care is flawed and not always of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be all profitable and progressive when they don't have a massive bogus unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy, right?

Remember, Canada is boring. Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever. Take that, Canada! Oh wait.

We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as "Bowling for Columbine" so beautifully illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don't feature violence and death on every newscast and still value community and diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general hatred of foreigners and the French. See? We rule! Oh wait.

All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that health care for all is mandatory for a nation's well being, before America finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small and wrong? Is there any number large enough? After the announcement that gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified of nipples and queers?

Canadians. So mellow. So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the world like a goddamn cancer. They're just so ... nice. And boring. And calm. And solid. And friendly.

And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing. Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be.

They did it. Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time: what the hell is wrong with them?

Oh wait. Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is wrong with us?

Listening to Robin S - Show Me Love (Stonebridge mix) from the album "Club Sounds Vol. 27 CD2"

Rewriting school books in Texas: Sex is bad, abstinence is good, condoms are missing, and gays are depressed, suicidal drug-users

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 23:27:36 -0800

Book-burning and more importantly, book-re-writing has been used throughout the rein of man to erase the collective knowledge and to curb dangerous thoughts and direct society. This infamous technique for hiding knowledge continues unabated today in Texas. Dubya and the ideologues (sounds like a great rock band title), continue to push their ideological and theological worldviews on youth, ensuring that the kids know little about sex education, thereby ensuring their continued Top 5 spot on the CDC's "child pregnancies per capita" list. In case that's not clear enough, I'll translate: Our view on what you should do is more important than not bringing unwanted babies into the world.

While they were at it, Terri Leo, one of the members of the 15-person Texas Education Board made sure that all homosexual code words like "couple" (gasp) and "adults" (shriek) were properly changed to husband, wife, mother, father, where appropriate. Thank God and the Republican member for getting that straight (pun intended.)

My favourite part of the article was this one:

The board rejected a proposal from Leo asking for language saying: "homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals as a group are more prone to self-destructive behavior like depression, illegal drug use and suicide."

How long will it be until they remove all of the science texts that reference evolution...or have they done that already. Then I guess we'd pretty much have to ensure that the kids don't hear about our newly discovered hobbit-like brethren from Flores Island or the genetic discovery that humans and mice came from the same genetic ancestor about 75 million years ago. We wouldn't want the kids to know that either. They might question the Bible, turn gay, have sex out of marriage (or in marriage), think for themselves, and grow up to be intellectually engaged adults.

The rest of the world voted on the US election - Kerry received 77.1%, Bush received 9.0%

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:55:52 -0800

Check out Global Vote 2004, a (purportedly) non-partisan, (purportedly) non-spamming simple voting site designed to allow the rest of the world to vote on the US election, since we're all going to be affected by it anyway. They are planning on releasing the vote count to the media 48 hours before the election.

UPDATE Nov. 1, 2004: The results have been tabulated and released. Over 700,000 voters around the world voted and the results were:

Kerry 77.1%
Bush 9.0%
Nader 6.7%
Cobb 3.8%

No surprises here I suppose. We all sort of know that the rest of the world would be happy to be rid of Bush.

Here in Canada our 8,587 voters came out as follows:

Kerry 74.2%
Bush 9.1%
Other 16.7%

Dilbert of the day - nanotech stem cells for fighting terrorists - sounds like something that could get great VC funding!

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:41:10 -0800

Enblogment: Kerry for U.S. President

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 11:03:21 -0800

I'm doing my part to join the enblogment exercise started by Larry Lessig. Everybody should link back (trackback) to their candidate of choice. The trackbacks will be analyzed against the election results to see if there is any correlation at all.

Here is my vote for Kerry.

Osama Bin Laden's transcript (from Al-Jazeera)

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:01:10 -0700

The transcript from Al-Jazeera is here.

Some interesting comments. In short, OBL blames American/Israeli bombing of Lebanon for being the root cause of his revenge.

Another interesting point is that he says four years have passed and the roots of the problem (Israeli/Palestinian relations) still have not changed.

He makes no comment on Saudi Arabia (most of the dead hijackers were Saudis.)

He comments that the Bush regime resembles the military-based and nepotism-based governments in his own countries and says, "Our experience with them is lengthy and both types are replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of wealth."

Another great quote reflects OBL's thoughts on the Patriot Act: "So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot Act under the pretences of fighting terrorism." Brilliant. This is how many people in the U.S. feel.

And he comments on the fact that Bush Senior had 'installed' two governing sons and fraudulent voting systems: "In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors and did not forget to import expertise in election fraud from the regions presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty." If nothing else, the guy certainly keeps up on his news.

Oddly, the piece does not give a call to action anywhere which seems a bit weird. It may be a cultural thing or else it is supposed to just hang there with the hope that people will turf Bush out of power.

Barlow, Lessig, Morford, The New Yorker & the Economist voting for Kerry

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:15:43 -0700

Here they are:

The Economist: The Incompetent or the Incoherent?
Lawrence Lessig: Enblogment: For Kerry
The New Yorker: The Choice is Kerry
John Perry Barlow: How to Overthow the Government
Mark Morford: Get Out and Vote and Scream

Kentucky Senator-elects try to outdo each other's homophobia

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:39:49 -0700

Well, it's a tough Senatorial race in Kentucky so they're pulling out all the stops and playing the gay card.

One of Senator Jim Bunnings supporters, State Senate president David Williams, tried to sway voters away from Senate hopeful Dan Mongiardo by deriding him as a "limp wrist". Not to be outdone, State Senator Elizabeth Tori said, "I'm not even sure the word 'man' applies to him."

In fine Kentucky form, the "accused" responded by reminding his local Rotary club that he had in fact co-sponsored the bill supporting a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage in Kentucky and said if elected he would support a similar bill in Congress.

So there you have Kentucky politics at its finest:

"Don't vote for him, he's a fag."
"Am not! I hate fags more than you do!"

Sounds like a grade one schoolyard in, well, Kentucky. Appalling. Hopefully the citizenry are more enlightened than their political "leaders".

New York Times covers Bush's catastrophic military and legal failures

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 14:43:14 -0700

Thanks to Scott Rosenberg at Salon for the links to this amazing set of articles at the New York Times covering Bush's catastrophic failures in Iraq on the military front as well as on the legal front.

I took the three long military articles from the New York Times and converted them to a PDF with full NYT headers so that it can be downloaded.

Massive Change - the future of global design

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:32:14 -0700

This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.

2004 is 1984: American government continues their drive for total, real-time, life-long tracking of all movement of its "citizens".

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:04:15 -0700

Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET News, covers the next degree of heat in the boiling frog pot otherwise known as the American government's plan to track every American citizen's communications, travel, finances, relationships, and lives from cradle to grave. This time,

One section of the new proposed legislation:

"...anticipates storing the 'lifetime travel history of each foreign national or United States citizen' into a database for the convenience of government officials. It mentions passports, but there's nothing that would preclude recording the details of trips that Americans take inside the United States."

Another section in the Senate legislation proposes setting up:

an "integrated screening system" inside the United States. [Senator John] McCain envisions erecting physical checkpoints, dubbed "screening points," near subways, airports, bus stations, train stations, federal buildings, telephone companies, Internet hubs and any other "critical infrastructure" facility deemed vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Secretary Tom Ridge would appear to be authorized to issue new federal IDs--with biometric identifiers--that Americans could be required to show at checkpoints.

In other words, you will be required to carry your national ID card which contains biometric (finger-print or retina scan) data) and then show it at all checkpoints along your trip. What the f**k is going on here? How is this possible? What has happened to the wild west? What has happened to the fiery independence of the forefathers of your country who said, "No more Britain, no more Queen, no more taxes, no more control." Your government has turned into one of the most Orwellian right-wing surveillance loving countries in the world all while saying, "and you will also have your civil liberties." Your citizens continue to bend over and take it, because you're trading your virginity for being kept safe from Witches, Communists, Pinkos, Terrorists. With each degree that your government adds to the pot, the American frog citizens say:

"Hmmm, another degree, well, it's not that bad - I mean, I only have to spend three hours in the airport being asked lots of questions by poorly trained screeners, getting booted off the plane because the no-fly list rocketed from 16 people to 20,000 people, and show my biometric ID everywhere I go in the country. But it's okay because it's keeping me safe from terrorists."

Bullshit.

Your own government is keeping you terrified far more than anybody else would.

The sad thing is that from here in Canada, where we would rather spend money on healthcare and cheap submarines, we don't have the money to spend tracking each and every person. In fact, I don't think we actually care that much. Sure we have the CSE, our version of your NSA. But I'm betting it has 1/1000th of the black budget. Our CSE guys are probably lucky to get two-year old desktop computers and some spare servers from Revenue Canada. Even our Joint Task Force (the Canadian version of the Navy Seals) has only a few hundred soldiers on active duty.

We watch the American citizen's march towards the abyss of complete and total surveillance but we can' t look away. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion - horrible, yet so intriguing.

As I have said before, we Canadians love you Americans, we just despise your government of the day. Kind of like the rest of the world. Feel free to move up here anytime. In fact, we may even accept you as refugees if you have to dodge the new draft that may be on its way.

HUMOUR: New Diebold U.S. election system now with online preview! (Just TRY and vote for Kerry)

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 17:10:39 -0700

More election humour from the U.S. (Thanks Dan Gillmor for the tip.)

George W. Bush: Keeping America Scared media remix - This is a must-see

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 13:54:24 -0700

This new 2 minute clip on how the Republicans have managed to distract Americans despite an entire four years of failure is almost as brilliant as This Land.

Look for web-reports that the author of this will surely exceed bandwidth limits on his/her Earthlink site soon.

What if everybody on Earth could vote in the U.S. elections?

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 09:58:14 -0700

I love this article from the Age news in Australia that discusses the unilateral nature of the Bush administration and the global impact that his Presidency has had over these past four years. The author raises a great question -- if the world is going to have to pay the consequences of an all powerful single superpower, shouldn't the world be able to vote on who is there?

Now I don't agree with the question. The world does not pay taxes to the U.S., athough they pay by the pound in other ways. And of course taxation is the root of governance. But it made me think about the fact that here I am in Canada and what do I blog about? American politics. What's to blog about here? Our sphere of influence is negligible on the world stage. We are nearly as impotent as all other countries and we constantly aquiesce to American policies and demands. This love-hate relationship is well documented. When we don't acquiesce and choose to go our own path with respect to drug policies for one example, we are threatened by the Americans with vague policies that will threaten our exports.

In the meantime, if you are Canadian, make sure that you ensure that all of your American friends vote!

Republican party admits that they told Americans that Kerry will ban the bible - unbelievable but true

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:05:38 -0700

Thanks to Fred Wilson for pointing out this NYT article that documents the direct mail campaign that the Republicans used in Arkansas and West Virginia - traditionally religious states.

QUOTE

mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned" and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

A liberal religious group, the Interfaith Alliance, circulated a copy of the Arkansas mailing to reporters yesterday to publicize it. "What they are doing is despicable,'' said Don Parker, a spokesman for the alliance. "They are playing on people's fears and emotions."

In an e-mail message, Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, confirmed that the party had sent the mailings.

UNQUOTE

This is divisive, deceitful, manipulative, blatantly wrong and untrue, and unfortunately par for the course for a party that can't seem to come up with a vision going forward to dig themselves out of the largest fiscal hole in years and the quagmire in Iraq. It's juvenile and irresponsible - which is wholly consistent with how this administration has acted for the past four years.

Cheney tries to backtrack on his scare-mongering

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 13:15:32 -0700

Cheney is trying to weasel out of his comments the other day where he said that if Americans vote for Bush, they will be safe, but if they vote for Kerry, they will likely get attacked again. Now he is saying that what he meant to say was the Bush and Kerry would RESPOND differently to another attack. Ummmm, here is the original quote:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Mr. Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall style meeting, according to The Associated Press.

I don't know about you but that seems to pretty clearly articulate that the attack will happen to Kerry and not Bush.

Great article on MoveonPAC.org - a grassroots, web-based political community

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 23:02:28 -0700

Wired wrote this great article on the MoveOnPAC, which was started by two founders, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, only six years ago and which has become "one of the most revered activist groups in America, supporting Democratic political candidates with tens of millions of dollars in advertising, as well as countless hours of telephone and door-to-door fieldwork".

Orwell rolling in his grave: The newest iteration of the intrusive, massive database cross-referencing passenger screening system has a new tagline: "Preserving our Freedoms". Bloody Hell.

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:54:03 -0700

I don't even have the energy to write much about this much-maligned system that was CAPPS and then CAPPS 2 and now SecureFlight. It is essentially a passenger screening system (like the flawed one I wrote about here and here) that has cost $100M to date and that is being relaunched with a new, friendly tagline to appease the anxiety of all of those nice people being screened. The new tagline is:

Preserving our Freedoms

Obviously they are not talking about preserving the freedom to travel anonymously in your own country without travel papers.

When are you, my American friends, going to rise up and say enough is enough, throw Bush out of office, and restore some semblance of normality to your police state?

Some further items of note in this article: "it will not scan for wanted violent criminals, a function that senior homeland security officials added last summer over the objections of the program's designers. " Remember how the original plan was to scan for terrorists? Well, now that the system is in place, shouldn't we make use of that money and scan for criminals? How about dead-beat Dads? Or runaway kids? Or how about anybody we damn well please?

Another frustrating thing is this statement:

"People close to the program said recently that Bush administration officials made it clear this summer that they were worried that the privacy questions sparked by the system could have a political impact during the presidential campaign. Security officials have postponed both testing and implementation of the system until after the election. "

In other words, if we're going to shove this intrusive system down their throats, let's do it after they're stupid enough to elect us again.

I'm baffled, and bloody happy that I live in a country that thinks that fiscal prudence, healthcare and education are the three biggest priorities, not massive over-spending, fear-mongering, and spying on its citizens.

THE best political humour I have seen this year - Atom Films - THIS LAND (UPDATED)

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:17:08 -0700

I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt and I was in tears. I highly recommend this movie being hosted at Atom Films.

CNET has written an article on the fact that this film has now received 10.4 million unique visitors in July - more than three times the number that visited Kerry's and Bush's COMBINED. More than visited Pepsi, Marriott Hotels, or Office supplier Staples.

Oh, and incidentally, this was done without spending a single dollar on marketing.

I wish Gregg Spiridellis and the gang at Jib-Jab Media continued success. They have obviously hit a nerve here.