The Pessimist

I finally succumbed to a Rogers pitch for digital cable TV. They've been pitching it for a couple of years in various forms: better bundles, personal TV, etc. But the pitch that finally worked appealed to the accountant in me: for just 50 cents a month you get all this stuff.

So I now have a digital cable box, a super fancy universal remote and channels numbered from 000 to 999. I have foreign language channels, music channels, movie channels, on-demand channels, time-shift channels, and who knows what else. Woo hoo!

After the first week, I was ready to send it back. The digital signal was unreliable (jumpy and pixelated, like a bad satellite link); the remote control wouldn't talk to the TV (which is an RCA, the "default" TV); and just watching and programming the VCR was an exercise in rocket-science.

The first problem was solved with a service call. At the store they tell you "just attach it to the existing cable outlet". But the existing cable outlet was a series of splitter boxes and 4 lengths of cable, none of which were compatible with the newer cable specifications. To their credit, the installer upgraded all of the cable, no charge.

The second problem has not been/cannot be solved. Even though the instruction manual clearly indicates that the channel selector on the remote can be "unlocked", neither the telephone tech help nor the installer could get it to do so. [More on that in the next post.]

As for the VCR, after trying several of the possible configuration arrangements, I got one that worked more or less to my satisfaction. But setting up to record a show requires two remotes and an incantation of at least 20 key-presses.

But have all of these channels increased my viewing pleasure? Not really. I still watch mostly from the 60 channels I had before. Thank god Rogers had the good sense to not renumber the channels. The main difference is that watching TV is now less convenient.

There are 1000 channel numbers. I don't know how many are actually used; more than 500 I guess. But I don't have all of the channels; the VIP bundle includes lots of channels, but there are still a lot more. The kicker is that the only way to tell I don't get a channel is to tune to it and be told "you don't subscribe to this channel. To subscribe to the channel phone 888-blah blah blah". But all of the channels appear on the guide.

All 3 of my TVs, even my oldest, a 25 year old RCA, have a feature for deselecting channels you don't want. In the basic cable world with 60 channels, I'd usually deselect 25 channels I never watch: the french language channels, the sports channels (speed, golf, etc), the Nashville network, CSPAN, etc. But in Rogers digital cable land, you cannot even deselect the channels you don't get, let alone those you don't watch.

Rogers provides a feature on the guide to search for programs by title. It lists every show for the entire day in alphabetical order. You can enter the list at any first letter. It is theoretically useful for finding time-shift shows. [I recently tried to find NBC Dateline, which I missed at 7:00. The guide said it was showing again at 10:00. Alas, I don't have that channel included in my bundle.] However, this feature is nearly useless. Pick any letter, say 'D'. You'd think 'Dateline' would be early on the list. You'd be right, except that you can only see 5 shows at a time on the guide, and Dateline was over 30 screens into the list. God help you if you want to find 'Donahue'. [It is even worse than that ... the list is case sensitive. Shows listed in upper case come before shows listed in mixed case.]

Rogers may think they have addressed this problem with two other features: Personal TV and favourites. Each is a user selectable list of 5 channels. This feature is sort of useful, but not really. 5 is too few; 500 is too many.

So, this is an open appeal to Rogers: Please change your system. At least add an option to the guide to suppress channels I don't subscribe to. And if you can devise some easy way to let me drop channels I don't watch, even better. But the latter may be challenging. Dropping 15 channels in a 60 channel universe is pretty easy; dropping 250 in a 500 channel universe, not so much.

Tory would expand religious school funding Kerry Gillespie
Queen's Park Bureau
Faith-based schools should have access to taxpayer funding just like public and Roman Catholic schools do, opposition leader John Tory says.

The pandering to extremist religious minorities and immigrants has started. The Ontario election is nigh. John Tory wants to use public funds to support religious schools. Well, you might expect such an orthodox idea from a leader of the Tory party named John Tory.

But this must never be allowed to happen.

Dalton McGuinty took the brave opposite stance when he smacked down the idea of allowing religious arbitration. Muslims demanded to be allowed to use religious Imams acting under Sharia law to settle family law disputes (divorce, child custody, etc.), because Jews and Catholics had this right already. But instead of giving power to nonCanadian law, (law that says a woman's testimony is equal to one half of that of a man's), McGuinty took away the arbitration powers of Catholic and Jewish religious 'courts'.

If the Progressive Conservatives are elected in October, they will appoint former premier Bill Davis to lead a commission to figure out the best way to bring religious schools into the public system, Tory said today.

Davis — who grappled with the issue of fully funding Catholic schools before making it law in the 1980s — is the perfect person to figure out how to bring such students into the public fold, Tory said.

Tory claims that it is unfair that religious schools are not funded, when Catholic Schools are funded. Catholic schools are funded in Ontario under some sort of weird constitutional compromise (public schools in Quebec [Lower Canada] are Catholic, in Ontario [Upper Canada] they are not; funded private schools are the opposite [not Catholic in Quebec, Catholic in Ontario). The 1980 debate was not about funding Catholic private schools, but extending their funding beyond grade 10 to grade 13.

Full disclosure I went to Catholic school. I remember being in grade 10 in 1970 and going to a rally in Toronto to support the debate on the extension of funding. I came face to face with Bill Davis, and I cheered encouragingly. My memory is a bit fuzzy: I recalled the decision being made then, but apparently the decision didn't actually happen until 1984; I guess I must have paid for my grade 11-13 education, or, at least my dad did, so who cares. I guess what I'm remembering is helping to get Bill Davis elected. Religion can influence elections. But anyway, by the time I graduated from the Ontario Catholic high school system, I was a committed atheist.

The correct approach to the fairness of funding religious schools is not to extend funding to other religions, but to withdraw funding from the Catholic schools system. It is a waste of resources anyway to have 4 school boards (Catholic/Public French/English). Make them all one.

To be fair to the education I was provided by the Catholic system, though, I don't feel that I received any indoctrination. The curriculum was the same as the public school system, except for one hour of religious studies a week. [Which, as noted above had the opposite of the desired affect on me.] And the student body contained many nonCatholics. Probably 15% (including a large contingent from China) who thought the school was better value than the free public system. Most of the teachers were lay people [which didn't have the double entendre that it does today].

But what do the Muslims want? They want Imam's teaching rote learning of the Koran in Arabic. (The children don't need to speak Arabic, just phonetically parrot the words.) They want boys segregated from girls, with girls getting second rate educations, if any at all. They want total separation from the infidels, so they can be taught to hate them.

What do the Jews want? They want to teach their children how to drain the blood from babies and drink it. No, wait, that's what the Muslims and Catholics say the Jew do. Why do the Jews want to be separate, so that assinine things like that can be said about them?

Public school forges Canadians. Everybody is the same, and everybody is equal. Sure they may have to scrap a bit for respect, but if a muslim and a jew sit at adjacent desks and get a boring Canadian history lesson from a female teacher with a Jamaican accent, maybe they'll learn something about being Canadian.

Intemperant comment following; stop reading if easily offended
Multiculturalism means ethnic dancing and ethnic food. It means respect for the differences of others. It doesn't mean pogroms; it doesn't mean ancient ethnic hatreds. Send your kids to public school if you want them to become Canadians. They'll mix with all races, religions, genders. They'll learn English/French. They'll learn respect. If you want your kids to be just like you (little mini-me's with all your baggage, hatred and insularity), get the fuck out of Canada; go back to where you came from. There are plenty of backward educational opportunities awaiting them back in the old-country.

It is hard for me to sort out my feelings on this one:

Michelle Shephard The Star

Omar Khadr's Canadian lawyer says a three-day visit to Guantanamo Bay included harassment by U.S. customs agents and a search of his private notes at the military prison.

Who do I hate more? Lawyers or the Khadr family?
On the on hand -- lawyers are a very low life form, able to take either side of an argument, and present it with equal commitment. "Your honour, it is clearly night." "Objection, your honour, my client has clearly mistaken day for night."
On the other hand -- the Khadrs -- Canada's first family of terror. They sponge off of our welfare state while hating everything we stand for and trying to kill us.

It's close; perhaps I hate the Khadrs slightly more.

But, the United States used to have a system of justice, with a clear set of rules.

Dennis Edney was on his way home Saturday from a visit with Khadr at the U.S. detention centre in Cuba when his military flight stopped at a small Fort Pierce, Fla., airport to refuel.

U.S. customs agents ordered him to retrieve his bags from the plane and hand over his notes and reveal any material on his laptop relating to Khadr,

"I'm indignant because it's an invasion on my solicitor-client privilege. It wasn't a random search of some guy who you're thinking is going to be bringing in drugs. This was a direct search into all matters pertaining to my client. That's a violation. That's harassment," Edney charged yesterday.

Before Edney was permitted to meet with Khadr on Friday, Guantanamo guards also searched his notes.

"They're not just thumbing through, they're reading the documents," said Khadr's military lawyer Lt. Commander William Kuebler.

For national security reasons, the U.S. has created this legal limbo, where people can be held for years, without being charged, and without access to lawyers or courts, except military kangaroo courts. After many years, the situation seemed to be inching toward normalcy, with at least a few of the detainees being given access to lawyers. But the lawyers have had their attorney-client privilege stomped on, not just in Guantanamo, but right in the continental U.S in Florida. (But, maybe this is somewhat understandable, as that state wasn't even able to count election ballots.)

So, will that be two evils, or three?

Six Canadian soldiers killed in a single incident in Afghanistan. This is a terrible event and I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of these brave soldiers. This single-day tragedy increases Canada's death toll by a full 10%, from 60 to 66. The work they are doing there is very important. They are trying to bring a backward country out of the middle ages, so that its retarded people cannot be used as weapons against civilization. Canada must support our troops with every needed resource. Obviously road-side bombs have become an effective weapon of the cowardly Taliban slime-balls. Our soldiers need a method to counter this threat. Surely some sort of unmanned bomb sniffer can be acquired and put to use clearing trails for convoys. If they cost millions each, then they are worth it, because our soldier's lives are worth so much more.

Our soldiers also need our unconditional support. No second guessing when Afghan civilians die 'needlessly' in skirmishes with the Taliban. The Taliban must be killed at any cost. The life of an Afghan peasant is worth only a tiny fraction of the life of a Canadian soldier. The calculus is clear. If Afghan civilians are too stupid to flee a war zone, or worse, support the Taliban combatants, then their deaths may be regrettable, but cannot be considered in how the war is conducted.

We avoid directly targeting civilians -- unlike the Taliban who make no distinction when meting out random violence.

The "Religion of Peace" has once again sunk to a new low. Islam has shown its power to corrupt anyone.

The latest terrorist bombers are (allegedly) doctors. Who is the last person you would expect to turn to violence/terrorism to make a political point? A doctor. A person highly educated, well paid, intimately familiar with human suffering. And who have, as part of their profession, taken the hippocratic oath, or some such equivalent, to alleviate human suffering and to work towards the betterment of the health of mankind.

Yet here is a group of 'doctors', who loaded up ordinary passenger vehicles with gas and propane tanks and nails (for added shrapnel) and tried to blow them up amongst random innocents.

We can understand that desperate people (desperately poor, stupid and weak) can be swayed to suicide/terrorism by unscrupulous manipulators. And the uninformed westerner (like me) usually believes in the goodness of people, and that the majority of Islamic followers are not suicidal maniacs.

But these latest terror attacks in London and Glasgow were (allegedly) carried out by practicing doctors employed by the UK national health service. Not students, or medical wanna-be's, but actual doctors. This is inconceivable. If a group of medical doctors (not a single psychotic individual, but a group of at least 8 professionals) can have a rational discussion and come to the conclusion that killing random individuals is a desirable course of action, then what are we to think? Islam is obviously toxic, and the acceptable maximum dosage is not well understood. Islam is contraindicated with civilization, and should not be tolerated in any quantity.