Category: Life

LOS ANGELES — A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc. He is also respectful of copyrights. Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music. The patch shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a “C” enclosed in a circle.

As per this article. Why is this bad?

Because I don’t trust a lobby group to give straight facts about an issue over which they have deep interests. This doesn’t have to do with what’s right and what’s wrong, this has to do with the promotion of a narrow viewpoint on a very diverse subject.

I mean if Scouts of America are letting the MPAA do this, they might as well have badges for scouts to promote the viewpoints of the cigarette lobbyists, the gun lobbyists, etc. I just don’t think that a lobbyists, who are by definition pro-something-or-rather, give a balanced viewpoint.

Scouts will be instructed in the basics of copyright law and learn how to identify five types of copyrighted works and three ways copyrighted materials may be stolen.

Scouts also must choose one activity from a list that includes visiting a movie studio to see how many people can be harmed by film piracy. They also can create public service announcements urging others not to steal movies or music.

Look at that curriculum! I mean this isn’t about teaching kids copyrights, it’s about brainwashing them. What is copyright? Well, it’s the protection of intellectual property. Last I checked, that was a topic that was about a great deal more than just piracy. If they wanted to teach piracy as part of the curriculum: great. It deserves to be there. However, if they want to make piracy %100 of the curriculum, then we have a serious problem on our hands folks.

This is exactly why lobbyists should not be allowed to pull off this kind of activity.

In this week’s dose of anti-news: stuff you should care about but won’t hear in the news, we have video footage of Chinese officials shooting and killing Tibetans. Warning: Video contains disturbing footage. Not for children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagCLqdwsgU

At first they said they didn’t know. “I’ve seen the reports about this, but I’ve no knowledge of the specific situation,” Liu Jianchao, a ministry spokesman, told a news conference in Beijing about the shootings at Nangpa La.

That’s when the pictures showed up.

Only hours later, China admitted. But now they claimed self-defense. A Xinhua report said that the people trying to cross the border attacked the soldiers, who were then “forced to defend themselves.”

Fear of monks and a child

Not a chance, reported Romanian climber Sergiu Matei. ”The Chinese militias were hunting Tibetans onto the glacier…shooting them like rats, dogs, rabbits – you name it.” And Sergiu has video to prove it.

Taipei Times wrote 2 years back about a China/Tibet incident, “the cowardice of the Communists is apparent. How truly timid and insecure they are to fear monks and a child.”

The Nangpa La refugees were mostly kids led by a young nun who was shot dead and a number of young adults. Out of the group of 70 people, 40 escaped but 30, including a large number of children still remain unaccounted for.

The video clearly depicts that the Tibetans had their backs to the soldiers, were unarmed, and offered no resistance. The nun who died, Kelsang Namtso, appears to have been shot in the back. During the shooting, a mountaineer in the cameraman’s group can be heard saying: “They are shooting them like dogs.”

That’s part of the report from MountEverest.net of all people. Due to it’s rapid rate of technological modernization and economic boom, people often dismiss the Chinese authoritarian regime. They associate it’s newfound capitalism with newfound freedoms and rights.

It simply isn’t the case. While China is, yes, opening up, it’s people are not free yet. There is a genocide going on in Tibet. A silent genocide but its there, through the use of forced assimilation, tactical destruction of cultural heritage sites, and of course countless unreported executions. China’s main news agency, XinHua, is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the government. It’s “negative” coverage of natural disasters gives it the impression of being open, but it is merely an illusion. XinHua will never be critical of any government-led action, much less injustices, in the nation.

Yet Western people seem so uncaring. I was watching the Daily Planet the other day. They covered this news of Chinese Olympians training for the 2008 games. Here was this girl, who, since the age of 3 was forced to train 12 hours a day in gymnastics. She was never able to go to even elementary school. She was never allowed to see her family, except for 2 hours during Saturdays. She is now 12, and her entire youth was sacrificed for a potential spot in the Olympics. When covering the story, the Daily Planet didn’t bat an eye at this. In fact, they spun this story as a tale of incredible dedication. While thankfully the child was well, a system that throws lives away as such for furthering its own status certainly is not.

China is not a free society. That should not be forgotten.

An article I wrote on teens and the digital music marketplace made the cover of PCWorld.ca! Or at least did so last week. Given the high rate of respondents, I didn’t want to post about it here until at least a week later. From the article:

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, and eight years later these portable music players have become as ubiquitous as cell phones amongst Canada’s youth. Brands such as the iPod are now household names, and have even spawned a new generation of words such as Podcasting. Still, the MP3 format is facing very uncertain times.

At the core of the issue is the fact that the MP3 revolution was one which the industry did not anticipate, or particularly want. Still, it was evident after the rise of Napster that the industry had to come up with a legitimate means to deal with this popular force.

The article was also slashdotted.

Well, a few new tidbits. First of all, I’ve just quickly completed the new Ottawa 2600 website. It’s to replace the old… um… txtfile that served as the Ottawa 2600 front for the longest while. You can access the new website from www.o2600.com.

In other news, Black & White, the Quintessential Player skin I designed, just hit the 2000 download mark. w00t!

Heya! Okay so new today we have the Field Notes for Blackburn Hamlet, GPS data, and more photos. The GPS data comes in two flavours: A CSV file (you can open it with Excel or Notepad), and an ArcGIS SHP file. Both are found in the ZIP file downloadable from below. I’ve uploaded the new photos; including some of the surroundings of the outcrop area to give a sense of general location.

Download Field Notes for Blackburn Hamlet here. (ZIP File; 9KB)
Download Field Notes for Aviation Parkway here. (DOC File; 56KB)
Download GPS Data here. (ZIP File; 3KB)
View all photos taken here [link removed].