New iPhone 4G / HD

After much speculation, it is real.

Financial Crisis warnings - Shouting Fire

From the Economist :

In a normal panic, perception overwhelms reality. Shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre and people do not wait to see the evidence before they rush for the exits. In the crisis of 2007-08, observes Michael Lewis in “The Big Short”, the reverse occurred. People remained in their seats while the building burned down around them.

The TTC

Just thought this remark by Pat Tanzola was worth posting:

"The deserving TTC management and Amalgamated Transit Union, who always do right by TTC employees – kudos to them. For example, by resisting the implementation of smartcards, the TTC successfully fights dehumanizing evils like “basic efficiency” and “long-accepted international standards.” Compassionate employers that they are, they let grown men and women watch tokens fall into a glass box while sitting behind a glass cage, eight hours a day, underground."

Source:

http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1177-ttc-the-better-way

Lower tuition = Better access for the Poor?

I'm baffled by the logic of countless student groups who proclaim their desire to reduce tuition fees so as "increase access to education" for the poor.

In lowering tuition rates across the board, they are effectively promoting the subsidization of education for the rich, and often for themselves. Altruism concealing selfishness.

If you truly want to increase access for the poor, the last thing you do is lower tuition rates. In fact, raise them.
Afterwards, you use those additional funds from those who CAN AFFORD to pay to provide bursaries and grants for those who can't.

And it worries me that so many of my fellow students are aspiring "leaders of tomorrow", yet so often devoid of basic logic.

How to Marxist / Communist professors mark assignments?

Do they actually give their students marks based on their individual assignments, or do they merely aggregate the class marks and give them an "average" in the spirit of "equality"?

6 Elements Every Conspiracy Theory Needs

Moon landing? Hogwash — a hoax to distract the public from the Vietnam War. Princess Diana’s car accident? That’s rich. The Royal Family clearly had her offed — as blithely as if it were removing a thorn from its highborn flank.

At least that’s what conspiracy buffs believe. And there seem to be more of them than ever. LondonTimes columnist David Aaronovitch says that our rampant infoculture provides a breeding ground for crackpot theories. Take the Web’s unique ability to lend unverified assertions an air of authority, add a dash of political instability, and you’ve got the ultimate medium for propagating alternate realities. “It’s more bearable that terrible events should be the result of a big conspiracy than the blind cruelty of the world,” says Aaronovitch, whose new book, Voodoo Histories (Riverhead, 2010), chronicles several of the 20th century’s most prominent conspiracy theories. “These stories are better than reality.”

But coming up with them isn’t just a matter of blaming the Freemasons; Aaronovitch identified six must-have ingredients, which are spelled out in the sample below. Use them to generate your own wild idea. But be careful — they’re watching you!

Link : Wired Magazine

Tuition fees and accessibility.

I am so sick of these upper middle class wanna-be do-gooders who think that lowering tuition fees is some sort of panacea for getting "marginalized" kids into school. The problem is much deeper than äffordability, and we should first address the social stigma of going to school. Yes, a stigma associated with anything that smells of intellectual pursuit. Lets start with the fact that by actually doing your homework, or answering your teacher in class, you will get bullied, teased, and ultimately, get your proverbial s$%# kicked in for being the odd man out. Having grownup on the "wrong side of the tracks" and in social housing, I know. Maybe it was my hatred for that place, that lifestyle and the desire to escape that urged me to go to school, or maybe it was my mom not having it any other way. Who knows.

I would love to cite some academic to back me up to this, but instead, I must refer to Chris Rock (a brilliant observer in his own right), who stated that in the ghetto, you get more respect for going to jail than you do going to university, and followed it with a hypothetical conversation (or from what I remember).

Person A. - "Yo, I just got my masters degree"

Person B. - "So what, you think you my master now, huh"?

Performance Art

All I can say about this is *wow*.

Up until this point, I thought it was just all a bunch of interpretive *rubbish*. But this absolutely blew my mind.

Question about the Tea Party Protesters?

Why is it that the most vocal "Tea Party" protesters and Anti-Tax activists are often those who pay the very least in taxes?

While I do understand that many small business owners also form the ranks of these groups, they are far from the vocal (voir : nutty) groups I was referring to.

To be honest, if anyone should be angry, it should be those rich, coastal "liberal elites" from the likes of New York, Silicon Valley, L.A, Boston, etc, afterall, they are the ones who will be hit hardest.

And remember, "Keep government hands of my Medicare" ;)

Quote of the day

Actually taken from a Bruce Springsteen song:

"Is a dream a lie, if it don't come true, or is it something worse" - The River

Quote of the day (Russian)

"бесплатный сыр только в мышеловке"

("Free Cheese only exists in a mousetrap")

Iranian Nuclear program - Does Israel even have the capacity to strike?

With an increasingly resolute Iran, there has been much speculation as to whether or not Israel will strike Iranian facilities in an attempt to halt their weapon development program. Many ask when?

I think that the real question is can they? Do they even have the capacity?

Many allude to their success in destroying Iraq's Osirak facility almost 3 decades back. Unfortunately, Iran is not Iraq.

Not only is the geographical distance further, thereby giving Iranian early warning and air defense systems the possibility of advance notice (even if from sympathetic Shia's in Iraq). Whether the famed Russian S-300 systems made it into the hands of the Islamic Republic or not, my guess is that their Air Defence systems are at a near perpetual state of alert.

To take those out however, would require a far more laborious effort, and more than likely require a massive scale deployment of American stealth capacity. Besides the overt military and political toll that would take on Obama's international and domestic standing, that also risks solidifying a fractious and gravely disenchanted Iranian electorate behind Ahmadinejad and his sabre rattling approach to the West.

Further to that, the fortified bunkers where Iranian nuclear dev. work takes place is much more technically complex to take out than an exposed, above ground reactor such as Osirak, especially considering how many facilities there are. This would involve successive runs (for each location) until the 3rd or 4th run has finally managed to "burrow" through the fortification and destroy the intended target.

I would prefer a nuke free Iran, but courtesy of their current UN Security Council love-in with China, I doubt the severe sanctions needed will ever materialize. If only China woke up and realized the de-stabilizing implications that a nuclear Iran would have on their own energy hungry interests. By this, I mean I have SEVERE doubts that Iran would directly act against Israel, (as most Iranian rhetoric is meant to gain favour from the wider Islamic world) but rather the effect that a increasingly influential nuclear armed Shia nation would have on the Saudi's and to a lesser extent Egypt.

What a complicated world...

Quote of the day

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

- Aaron Levenstein

Introducing the iPad

Quote of the day

It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but much more difficult to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.”

–Lech Walesa, speaking of how to restructure an economy after decades of Communist mismanagement