Is a Canadain Government agent attempting to ‘influence’ a court?

March 17, 2010 — xanthippa

Read it and weep…

When I first read this – that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) is retaining a lawyer who is attempting to intervene in a private lawsuit between two citizens, and that the CHRC may have been giving quite a lot of legal advice to only one of the parties in the lawsuit, making us the taxpayers pick up the tab, I was angry.  And, I started to write this up as exactly that.

Ezra Levant exercises his freedom of speech to ridicule another lawyer, Mr. Vigna.  Mr. Vigna sues Mr. Levant for damages to his reputation.  A court will decide whether the line between ‘fair comment’ and ‘slander/libel’ has been crossed:  and so it should be.  The CHRC ought to butt out and it is wrong of it to meddle and to pursue its vendetta against Mr. Levant simply because he dared to stand up to them.

In other words, I was angry – but focused on this  ‘Serene Queen‘  case.

But, the more I thought about it…

The CHRC is an arm of the government.   As such, any lawyer retained by the CHRC and acting on the CHRCs behalf is, legally speaking, an agent of the state.

Now – IF I understand this correctly – this agent of the state has just disregarded proper legal procedures (not filing for an intervenor status prior to the case and therefore being bound to give the defender access to what they will argue, so the defender can prepare a defense) and has inserted herself into the proceedings, approached the judge and attempted to influence the course of the court case!

Please, consider the implications!

An agent of the  state can influence the courts, without following proper legal procedures!

Is this not a thing that only happens in states so corrupt that there is collusion between the courts and the government?

Our judiciary is there as a check on the power of the government – to ensure the government is not able to circumvent the constitution and rob citizens of their rights and freedoms.  Is it  not?  I am not a lawyer, but, this is what we were taught in our civics class…

So, for the government agent to be able to CIRCUMVENT follow proper law and procedures and all that, and INFLUENCE A JUDG in case where the government is not an interested party (as in, they are not doing either the suing or the defending) – that is a really, really dangerous thing!

This is much bigger than just some government agency wasting taxpayer dollars.

This could very well constitute an attempt by the government (through this agent) to corrupt our courts!

As such, I think we need an immediate police investigation of this!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Genetic Modification: What defines you as ‘human’?

March 17, 2010 — xanthippa

This is a discussion we really, really ought to have had long before we developed the technology to do this.

It is not a good situation when ‘public debate’ – for whatever reasons, be it cultural, religious or just because it is easier to control an ignorant population – does not keep up with our technological abilities.

This all comes down to the whole ‘knowledge’ versus ‘wisdom’ thing…

What prompted this?

We have long been served plant-foods which contain artificially spliced in genes from other plants – or, possibly, animals.  And, we are not permitted to know (legally) what is what.  Now, we are about to be presented with meat which contains the genes of several animals…. (H/T: BCF)

We may know what we are doing – technologically.  But, do we understand what we are doing, both morally and legally?

* * *

We can no longer even agree on what defines ‘male’ versus ‘female’.

Really – do think about it.

It used to be easy:  the external presentation was sufficient.  And, any hermaphrodites were either so successful at passing themselves as one or the other sex that the question was really mute.  Even that really, really weird case in some isolated pacific islands where ‘every generation’,  some ‘clearly female children’ would, during puberty, develop into males.  To the islanders, it was clear:  while the child ‘appeared’ female, it was ‘a female’.  When the external presentation changed and the child began to look like a man, the (now) youth became ‘a male’!

But, now….

It is no longer so simple!

At first, it looked like our scientific knowledge actually simplified things:  females have two X chromosomes while males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome.  Simple, right?

Except that….

Back in the late 1980’s, we learned that there are many men who have the required XY combination – plus another X chromosome!  Sometimes, as many as 5 or more ‘scrunched’ looking X chromosomes were found!  (Not important here, but they also found that the men with the extra ‘scrunched’ X chromosomes had a propensity for becoming very, very violent criminals.)

The question then becomes:  is a person with two X chromosomes legally female?

Or, is the presence of a Y chromosome that which defines a person as ‘male’?

We never really had that public debate….when we learned that one’s self-perception as ‘male’ or ‘female’ is set by specific hormones affecting our brain development while we are still fetuses!  If a particular chemical gets released during a very specific point of our fetal development, we will think of our selves as ‘male’.  If it does not get released – or gets released late, or in too small amounts, we self-perceive as ‘female’, regardless of our genetic makeup or our sexual orientation!

Then we learned how to perform ‘sex change’  operations….

…which opened a whole new debate!

If a person is born female – double X chromosomes – and undergoes a sex-change operation, that person is now legally male:  regardless of ‘genetic makeup’.  So, we are back to ‘external presentation’ as being the key defining element.

Except for the case of Caster Semenya…

(Aside:  this case would be mute if we did not practice strict sexual apartheid in sports – another issue we should really, really take a look at … but that is not the focus of this post.)

What I am trying to point out is that where  ‘male’ and ‘female’ used to be defined easily (more or less), using ‘common sense’, the scientific advances we have led to technology which muddles the debate, to the point where different countries around the world have irreconcilably different legal definitions of ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’!

* * *

Still, this is a minor debate compared to the ‘what defines ‘humanness” debate!

In my never-humble-opinion, this debate is more charged with religious pitfalls than just about anything else!  After, all, the whole ‘abortion’ debate is only a sub-section of this greater debate of  ‘where’ we draw the legal – as well as moral, as it is wrong to legislate morality, so the two ought not necessarily be the same – line of what defines who/what is or is not human!

(This is NOT meant to be an ‘abortion debate’ –  please, don’t turn it into one!  I only mentioned it because I wanted to underlie both  just how important and charged this debate is ….and how bizarre it is that we are NOT having this ‘greater’ public debate!)

For many years, I had a neighbour whose daughter was born missing a pair of chromosomes.  Still, she was completely human!  Disabled, yes.  But, she WAS a human being!

Yet, because she was missing two whole chromosomes, she was genetically more different from ‘average human’ than most primates are….and we certainly don’t consider THEM human!  ALL primates are used as ‘live meat’ – without any regard to anything else – in all the vaccination-producing and other ‘medical’ labs in the world!

So, what defines YOU as ‘human’?

Just how much genetic damage and/or mutation do you have to suffer before you and your children  are no longer defined as ‘human’?  Legally or morally?

We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees – yet, legally, they are ‘live meat’.

And people missing  way more than 2% of human DNA, like my ex-neighbour,  are still ‘human’!

This is a really, really important public debate we ought to be having now!  OK – we should have been having it long ago….  Still, delaying it now is dangerous to the very core of our society!

Why?

Because now that we have the technical ability to swap genes between species, we are putting our ability into practice without having defined how we will ‘consider’ the ‘results’!

We can take genetic material from one species, splice it into another – and have the ‘spliced’ genes passed on to the next generation!

And,  we have not had the public discussion about this.  About what makes one species unique – and how that uniqueness is or is not affected by splicing in genes from another species!

Yes, this has been going on for a long time.  Animal genes were spliced into plant genes, genes from one animal are being spliced into another – we have the technical ability!  Yet, we have not really – really – had the public debate about it…

Oh, sure – we have talked about ‘Franken foods’!  About plants which have been genetically modified in one way or another.  Still, much of the  public debate has been stifled – and, perhaps more ominously, there is actual legislation that forbids produce labels which would identify whether the food one is about to purchase has – or has not – been genetically modified!

WHY?

“To prevent  prejudice against genetically modified foods!’ – we are told…

No – I don’t mean to get into weird conspiracy theories here.  I think the answer is very simple:  money.  If a genetic manipulation is financially beneficial to the ‘genetic manipulator’, that ‘genetic manipulator’ will consider investing in ‘product-favourable legislation’ to be no less important a component of their investment in ‘bringing the product to market’ as  ‘scientific research’  how to do it actually is.  That is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ – that is simply ‘good business sense’.

Again – the mechanics of this are not the point of this post.  Let’s just accept the current state of things as they are now – not as they ‘ought to be’ – and get to the greater issue.

Just how MUCH genetic material from one species does a living organism have to contain (or be missing) before it is legally considered (or no longer considered) a member of a particular species?

We do now have mice which have had ‘human breast cancer’ genes spliced in – and pass them on to their offspring.  That means that human genes (OK – ‘broken’ human genes, but human genes none-the-less) are present in sentient beings which do not enjoy any of the rights and freedoms of fully-human beings.  Just how MUCH of our ‘human’ DNA should a creature contain before it is ‘human’?

Legally?

Morally?

What about my neighbour, born missing a few chromosomes?  If a child is born with ‘sufficiently large’ genetic disorder, will it no longer have the legal protections of other humans?

* * *

OK – let’s consider the story I linked: ‘ pork’ which contains mouse genes is now being proposed for sale, without any labels informing the customers that they are buying (presumably for consumption) meat which contains both pig and mouse genes.  We also know there are ‘genetically designed’  mice out there, which contain human genes…

And fish are about to enter our food markets which contain ‘beef-genes’…tip of the proverbial iceberg!

How long before we are being served ‘animal meat’ which contains ‘some’ human genetic material?

How MUCH human genetic material does a meat have to contain before it is considered ‘cannibalism’ to consume it?

Will it be illegal for us to even know we are consuming ‘flesh’ which contains ‘some’ human DNA?

What I am trying to say is….before we physically blur the lines between species – something our technology today permits us to do with impunity – we ought to remember that we, humans, are just a species ourselves!

Any ‘genetic pollution’ we permit, any ‘genetic-line-smudging’ we allow, will, necessarily, set a precedent for all ‘species-specific’ blurring of lines – even the lines of the human species.

I do NOT pretend to have any of the answers.  I freely admit I am deeply conflicted on the issue….

Really – we ought to talk about this!

Posted in debate, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »

Seeking volunteers for Crowdreview of IPCC’s references!

March 9, 2010 — xanthippa

Donna Lafromboise of ‘There is No Frakking “Scientific Concensus” on Global Warming’ is seeking volunteers who are willing to spend 3-10 hours in reviewing the IPCC’s references – simply to check (and count) the number of ‘peer-reviewed’ references versus ‘other’ sources (like, say, an ad by WWF, a press release, a guess in an obscure non-scientific magazine, and so on).

The reason?

Most of our policymakers (worldwide) are pretending (acting as if) the 2007 IPCC report were the absolute truth, represented a 100% scientific consensus (you know – anyone who disagrees is automatically defined as a non-scientist, or worse – a denialist!).

One of the reasons most often cited for considering this to be THE authoritative last word that we, pesky humans are boiling poor Mother Earth do death is that the IPCC report is based on solid scientific evidence. All the IPCC evidence, the warm-mongers claim, is based on scientific studies which were peer-reviewed and published in reputable scientific journals.

‘Peer-review’ is what makes a scientific study ‘respectable’.  It is a process in which other respected scientists (ones who are not connected with the people who did the original work and who wrote it up for publication) read the original study, examine how the data was collected, how it was manipulated, how the study analyzed the data and whether the data supported the conclusions which the authors of the study made.  In other words, it’s like having a teacher mark your homework…..  If it is ‘good’ – it passes the ‘peer-review’ and the scientific journal can publish the study with the knowledge that their reputation will not be tarnished by doing so.

This, of course, puts great pressure on the scientists reviewing the study.  No, they are not expected to re-create the experiment, but, they are responsible for making sure that good scientific methodology was followed, that the data collected actually measured what the original scientists thought it measured (THIS is where MORE mistakes in scientific studies happen than most people – including scientists – are aware of), that the statistical analysis used was appropriate for the data, and so on.  It is a big responsibility – with the greatest asset a scientist has on the line:  their reputation!

That is why ‘peer-review’ is considered to be an assurance of ‘good, sound science’.

And THAT is why the IPCC and its supporters argue that since the IPCC is based on ‘peer-reviewed’ scientific studies, it is above reproach!

OK….

For the sake of the argument, let us set aside any claims that the IPCC-associated scientists turned ‘peer-review’ into ‘pal-review’ and actually check to see just how accurate the claim that the IPCC used only scientific studies which were ‘peer-reviewed’ and published in reputable scientific journals.

In her post, Donna says:

‘How much of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is based on peer-reviewed literature? Recent examinations of two random chapters found only 24 percent and 58 percent of the sources cited were peer-reviewed journal articles.’ ‘

So, she has decided to put the whole thing to the test!

But, that is a lot of checking….  Therefore, she is looking for volunteers who would be willing to share the load:

‘The goal of this project is for each chapter to be counted thrice, by three volunteers working independently of one another. In the event that tallies differ dramatically, further examination will occur. Should they differ only marginally, the count that is most favourable to the IPCC will be used.’

So, if you have a bit of time and are willing, head on to her site and get counting!

Posted in science, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Nigel Farage on the need for ‘Rompuy – dumpy’ and more

March 8, 2010 — xanthippa

By now, most people have probably seen the video of the Brit elected member of European Parliament, Nigel Farage’s lambasting of the unelected President of the European Council, His Holiness Van Rompuy (pronounced ‘rumpy’).  If not, it is available at TheReferencFrame, JustRight, and many others wonderful places.

Farage is being told that he, as the elected official, has no right to criticize Von Rompuy.  Here on Alex Jones (OK – Alex Jones is a bit of a nut, but, every now and then, he does have good interviews), Nigel Farage explains how this is a victory of bureaucracy over democracy:

Part 1

Part 2

And, just to put it into perspective, take a peek at this: “Behind The Big News: Propaganda and the CFR”.  (Hat tip:  TheReferenceFrame.  Lubo Motl said he thought it sounded a bit conspiracy-theorist-like, so he fact-checked it  – it appears to be on the up-and-up.)

Just as it looks like the whole poitical/financial world is going down the toilet, we are being told that to be eco-friendly, we ought to be flushing our loved ones who pass away down the toilet!   (Just imagine the exorcisms we’ll need the next time the Ottawa homes’ basements fill with untreated sewage – once we begin to pour human remains ‘down the drain’!  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath-water…)

MooseAndSquirrel has the reducing-humans-to-poop-sludge eco-cremation story, along with links to that Global Warming Alarmism classic movie, ‘Soylent Green’ (yes – the reason things are so desperate in movie-dystopia is because of anthropogenic Global Warming!).  Spooky:  the eco-cremation process, as described in M&S’s links, covers people in silk and dissolves them in a liquid…. JUST like in the movie!

It almost makes you wonder if the conspiracy theory nuts are less nutty than we give them credit for…

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

City of Ottawa to English employees: “No Saturdays For You!”

March 4, 2010 — xanthippa

This is just a tiny little example of the malaise which is crippling the City of Ottawa!

The ‘French Languages Services Branch’ decided that right now, when the City of Ottawa is so broke it cannot prevent raw sewage from flooding people’s basements, over and over… when the City of Ottawa is unable to pay the upkeep on municipal buildings so that some  have become safety hazards (like, say, the stands as the Landsdowne Park that had to be pulled down)…..when the City of Ottawa has no funds to maintain public housing, turning a deaf eat to senior citizens’ requests to have cockroaches and bed-bugs and, yes, rats (!) exterminated from their meager citty-run housing….

… when all this is happening, the French Languages Services Branch decided that it is time to celebrate the excellence with which they deliver French Language Services to the citizens of Ottawa!

And, to be honest – they are doing as bang-up job!

All the ‘keep out’ notices on condemned buildings are translated into flawless French and high-quality signs with it are posted all over!

And, all the letters requesting that the City bring the housing units it runs up to code are replied to in both English AND most elegant French, telling them that their concern is noted and once there are funds, someone will look into it.  May be…

And all the numerous glossy fliers we receive at our residence from the City of Ottawa, informing us of which services are no longer going to be provided by The City – well, those are also flawless in both their layout and excellent bilingual formulation of the esteem The City holds its  citizens in!

So, you see, they really DO deserve a little ‘pick-me-up’, a ‘pat on the back’, an unmistakable message that their dedication to excellence and best practices is appreciated..

This ‘appreciation’ took shape in a fancy glossy calendar.  Full colour picturesque pictures of scenic Ottawa may have brought the printing costs up a little – about $16,000 for the 2,500 calendars printed (somewhere near $6. 50 per calendar, if my math is not mistaken).  But, it was for the employees – to show appreciation – so it was worth it!

The calendars have arrived.  No, they do not provide any ‘City-of-Ottawa specific’ information – you know, like when seasonal event seasons start and end, or when The City delivers specific services (you know, like which is the 1-morning-a-month when the ‘hazardous materials’ depot (where we are supposed to bring used-up batteries, and so on) is open, and where (it moves around so it is hard to keep up with it) and so on).  It only lists the ‘usual’ information that any glossy, colourful $1.99- over-the-counter calendar does.

And, this 2010 calendar arrived and was handed out before the end of February 2010!  Big cheer for efficiency!!!  Yeeeeeay!

But, there was a tiny, itsy-bitsy mistake.

So tiny, it took days for anyone to notice it.

Well – there was no mistake in French, only in English, so you can understand how the French Services Delivery Branch would not really notice it.  After all, it is not the Bilingual Services Delivery Branch!  And, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t an English Services Delivery Branch to partner with in collaborative efforts!

So, the days of the week – all through the 12 months – go as:  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday.

Yes – there is no Saturday!  Not one!

Now, I do not believe it is a sign of systemic anti-Semitism within the French Services Delivery Branch, because I do not believe this was an attempt to expunge or hide or otherwise ‘get rid of’ the Sabbath.  (Still, a simple check of the French Services Delivery Branch’s hiring statistics, to ensure they are fully compliant with the multicultural hiring quotas, is probably warranted – just to make sure!)  ;0)

But, I do think this belies a cultural prejudice:  in Quebec, most calendars adhere to the ‘Mainland European’ standard of starting the week with Monday and ending it with Sunday.  In Ontario – both the English and the Franco-Ontarien adopt the ‘Anglo’ standard of starting the week with Sunday and ending it with Saturday!

Therefore, I suspect that far from being a language issue – this mistake is the fruit of a growing cultural  gap as Franco-Ontarien culture is systematically being eroded and replaced by Quebec culture… because it seems to me that the most likely way this ‘mistake’ would have happened is that a Quebec-culture person, at the last moment, noticed that the week is not ending in ‘Sunday’ and ordered the change!

I, for one, find that highly offensive!

‘Language’ and ‘culture’ may be related, but they are not the same thing!

And, too often – especially here in Canada – we confuse the two.

But that is a grave mistake!  Just look at the rich cultural diversity among different countries that are, say, Spanish-speaking!  The culture of the Dominican Republic is not the same as the culture of, say, Argentina, is it? Yet they share a common language…

Similarly, Franco-Ontariens may speak French, but,they have a very different culture than Quebec does!  Let’s not forget this – ‘French’ and ‘Quebec’ are not synonymous!  Listening to people, it sounds like Franco-Ontariens are as deeply frustrated (if not more) by the Quebec French-language militants who are exporting their discord into Ontario as the rest of us are!

So, I present to you:  this little typo is not a ‘language’ mistake – it is a ‘culture-gap symptom’!

It shows that many of our City of Ottawa employees are less interested in delivering services to us, the citizens, then they are about playing politics with our money!  Spending our tax dollars in sowing cultural discord within the city and building their own bureaucratic empires, funding ‘perks’ for the employees – till there is none left to provide even the most core services!

…all the while The City can’t afford to fix the tons of raw sewage still spilling into the Ottawa River.

How fitting!

Posted in corruption, politics, society. Tags: , , , . 5 Comments »

CO2 gives ‘reflected heat’ a ‘cold shoulder’: Knowledge Drift

February 28, 2010 — xanthippa

Interesting post at Knowledge Drift: ‘Longwave seeks hot date; Cold Shoulder from CO2’

“The wheels are falling off the AGW bus. Resignations, papers withdrawn, admissions of fraudulent analysis, bad data, missing data… and now the Institute of Physicists, the Royal Society of Chemists, and the Royal Statistical Society have all provided official submissions to the British Parliament. They are all saying pretty much the same thing. The research done at the CRU doesn’t come anywhere near close to the standards required to be called science.

…

“The problem with the common explanations of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is that they are both over simplified, and incomplete. For starters, even the term “greenhouse gas” is misleading. …”

From there, it goes into very clear, understandnable explanations of the inconsistencies in the hypothesis of Carbod-doixide forced Global Warming.

It is well worth the read!

Posted in science, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Knowledge Drift: Physicist vs. Climatologist

February 22, 2010 — xanthippa

OK – this is funny.

Except that it is so serious.

Still, it is illuminating – and fun!

Posted in Humour, politics, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

Salim Mansur: Unveiling the truth behind Sharia

February 22, 2010 — xanthippa

If you read this blog every now and then, you probably know I am not exactly a lover of ‘Sharia’.

Quite to the contrary:  I regard Sharia as an abomination designed to de-empower (if you excuse the expression) women and other segments of society.

Salim Mansur’s colum in the Toronto Sun is right on:

“But the Islamists have succeeded in making the argument that the faith in, and the practice of, Islam is confined by the Shariah, and anything outside of it is non-Islam.

This argument deliberately obscures the fact that the Shariah is a legal system devised under Arab supremacy during the last three centuries of the first millennium and it was based on a reading of the Qur’an that reflected the prejudices of that age in history.”

And – he is absolutely right!

Shariah did not exist at all until several hundred years after the life of Muhammad.

Muhammad – for better or worse – declared that he was the last of the prophets.  That what is said in the Koran IS the whole of Islam.  That no other human  being had the power to ‘interpret’ Islam for others…

Yet, that is exactly what Shariah is:  other men’s interpretation, superimposing their opinions over the Koran!

This is exactly the very thing Muhammad forbade!  If one is to follow the rules prophet Muhammad laid down, really really follow them, they have no choice but to reject Sharia because it is against everything Islam stands for!

OK – I am not as good at expressing it as Salim Mansur is. So, read his column!

H/T: Blazing Catfur

Posted in freedoms, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

“Would I sell this information?” Part 1

February 20, 2010 — xanthippa

Facebook.

Myspace.

Buzz.

Twitter.

Linked-in.

Flicker.

Photo-tagging.

Online bookmarks.

Online calendars.

Online contact  databases.

….a ‘billion’ other applications where you enter private information about yourself, your family, your friends, your likes, dislikes and preferences, and on and on and on…

We participate in these things because they are fun.

They make it easier to connect (on a professional or personal level) with other people.

And, they make it easier to keep track of the information we find useful.

Of course, doing this ‘online’ protects us from loosing our data should our own system go down.  And, we can log-in from anywhere in the world!

What could be better?

As much as these are useful tools, before we pump our information into them, we ought to ask ourselves one simple question:  “Would I sell this information?”

If the answer is ‘yes’ – no problem.

But, if the answer is ‘no’ – don’t put that info anywhere where it is accessible through the web!

Because, whether you like it or not, this information you enter into online sites about yourself – and all your associates:  family, friends, business – becomes public.

Even if you select ‘private’ settings, not displaying all of this information to anyone viewing these sites, the information is fully visible and accessible to anyone working on the ‘back end’ of the site.  This includes the people who run and administer the site as well as the contractors and independents who develop applications for that site!

And, have no illusions:  these people make most of their livelihood through datamining . Some use the results of their datamining simply to help them ‘tailor’ applications to ‘your liking’ – but, they do retain the original information for possible future use.  Others are less scrupulous…

Of course, any system is only as strong as its weakest link!

Do you know the people who work for these companies?  What kinds of security clearance these people have – if any?  What kind of assurances you have that your private information is not being sold (not necessarily by the companies, but, perhaps, by greedy 3rd party employees)?

In other words, even if you don’t sell the information yourself, somebody can.

And if they can – they will.

Because in today’s world, information is the most potent currency.

We have all heard about people who kept ‘tweeting’ their location – so thieves knew they were not home and could break in without impunity.  Well – if you have a GPS in each of your vehicles which is monitored by a 3rd party (for your safety, of course), are their employees not able to also see when you away from home?  Are you certain not one of their employees is on the payroll of organized crime?

Of course, that is just a mundane tip of an anything-but-mundane ice berg!

What about information about the people you do business with – or ones you socialize with?  Would you sell those lists?  Would you sell the list of all the people you are related to – and how?

Because if you publish them – and, yes, putting them anywhere ‘web-accessible’ is equivalent to publishing them – somebody will!

So – what sparked this reaction?

The other day, I got yet another invitation to yet another ‘networking site’.  It was from a person I highly respect, whom I have had professional dealings with for years and whom I have also enjoyed socializing with.  And, yes, he is likely to be one of the backers of this particular networking site.

Once I accepted the invitation, the site offered to migrate my ‘contacts’ into my profile – and it offered all the ‘major’ email services as options I could ‘click’ to have ‘contacts’ migrated from into this one central place I could easily access from ‘anywhere’ by just logging in.  OK – I admit it – I may have accepted the invitation to join, but, I was not about to hand over all my address books!

Despite not having migrated a single one of my contacts onto the site, just by the virtue 0f my name and email address, it ‘suggested’ potential ‘people’ I ought to ‘link with’ as I might know them – and asked if it ought to categorize them as ‘business’, ‘friends’ or ‘family’.  Lo and behold – there were very many people on this ‘would you like to link up with/you may know’ list whom I have worked with, some of them years ago….

Now, aside from my name and email, all other info I entered into the site was made up (yeah – so sue me!).  Thus, my name and email were the only two pieces of info this site had to work with.

Still, it could accurately re-create a large portion of my professional contacts, going years back in time!

Take a moment to ponder this.

What a powerful tool this is!

As to who is wielding it, to what purposes – and with what security – I cannot tell…

So, I repeat:  if you are not comfortable selling a piece of information about yourself – don’t make it web-accessible!

Posted in freedoms, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

BlazingCatfur: one dangerous kitty!

February 19, 2010 — xanthippa

BCF is SOOOO dangerous, the head commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission – Madame Lynch herself – would appear to have banned all her minions from reading his blog!

Or, something like that… with all the blacked out ‘ink’ on the ‘Access to Information’  thingy, citing “protected solicitor client privilage”, who can tell?

Mieow!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »
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