Asian Canadian girls remarkably cheerful about getting STDs.

It's just a bad choice of a stock photo - I think I saw the same pair of models on a earphone package. One would expect a more serious expression on the cover of a pamphlet dealing with a virus that can lead to cervical cancer!

H1N1 intimations of mortality

A little boy was looking at an elderly man leaving the clinic after the flu shots - he asked "Look at the old man - Why is he old?". His mother said everybody, including him, was going to get old.
"I don't want to walk with a cane!" he said.
"Maybe if your bones stay strong and your spine stays straight you won't have to." she said.

I had both the H1N1 and the seasonal flu shots today - neither has given me any real discomfort. There were a lot of Mohawks at the clinic, since the news says that natives are most affected by this virus.

Tilley Socks do keep their promise

Tilley Walking Socks are supposed to have a three year guarantee against holes - mine did get one only a few months after purchase - it didn't look like hole developed from wear - it looked like some type of chemical had eaten away the material - but they did replace it with a new pair although I only mailed in one damaged sock and did not charge me for postage.

Stew Cameron

Stew Cameron - possibly the only victim of Socred inspired terrorism - was a cartoonist who published editorial cartoons that enraged the Social Credit premier of Alberta, "Bible Bill" Aberhart in the early 1940s.  In his book on Canadian cartoonists The Hecklers, (1979) Peter Desbarats reported that Stew's home "was once fire-bombed", but John Adcock has said he could not substantiate this. Cameron is best known for his cowboy cartoons.

Cariboo Cameron House

Cariboo Cameron was a miner who struck it rich in the goldfields of California and British Columbia. His wife had died after childbirth in a mining camp and he shipped her home in an alcohol filled casket. Cameron had to bribe Tammany Hall appointed custom clerks in New York to get the casket home and had to exhume her after a newspaper claimed that she was not in the casket and that she was still alive since he had sold her into slavery - supposedly the grass wouldn't grow for years near her grave in Salem church after they'd dumped out the alcohol. This is his home in Summerstown, Ont - the head of the scotsman is said to be him and the woman his wife Sophia.

Cat under the Table Cloth

Rusty gets under the table cloth

Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Carol

An old article for the season

Salvation Army Barbershop

Salvation Army Barbershop

Ubuntu AMD64 and flash

If you have a computer with a  AMD64 processor you can install a free Ubuntu operating system and get the benefit of 64-bit processing (basically it's faster) without getting a Windows Pro OS.
One mistake I made was when I installed Adobe's flash for AMD64 was not  removing the nspluginwrapper which let 32 bit flash, which I had previously installed, work with a 64 bit system, as suggested by Softpedia.
Not removing made it hard to click on the play and volume buttons using youtube and other video sites.
All you need to do to fix it is run Synaptic Package Manager, look for nsplugin and remove it and the other programs that work with it. Youtube now worked fine and I didn't need to reinstall anything.

Winter Gear

Winter Clothing

It was about - 20 this morning, with a wind chill. The face mask is thin neoprene, so it doesn't absorb water from your breath and turn into ice.

Why is there a cowbell on the desk of the speaker of the Irish parliament?

Recently, Paul Gogarty, a Green Party member of the  Dáil, the Irish Republic's parliament, said "F**k You" to fellow member Emmet Stagg.
 Lots of commentators thought it was quaint and compared it to James Joyce - it wasn't and bringing up someone's Irishness whenever they behave like a jackass in public is stupid. (Saying 'dat' and 'witdraw' instead of 'that' and 'withdraw' is just an Irish accent, not a sign of feeble mindedness, and doesn't excuse misbehavior!)
I was wondering why there was a cowbell on the speaker's desk - it isn't a cowbell, according to Edward Canavan, spokesperson for the Irish parliament, who said it was the Ceann Comhairles Bell,  a half-size reproduction of a bell that was found at "Castle Island, Lough Lene, Castlepollard, County Westmeath in 1881", and presented to the house in 1931 by the widow of Major Bryan Cooper, a former member.
(Image of Ceann Comhairles Bell taken from homepage of the oireachtas, (Irish Parliament))