The Squid Zone

I don't know what teams played in the Super Bowl... and I'm proud of my ignorance!

The Super Bowl... I don't get it.  Maybe if I post this, someone can explain it to me.

There aren't a lot of football fans in Canada, especially NFL fans.  Yes there are some, I even know a few, but compared to hockey and international soccer, there aren't many.  This is especially true as you move away from the US border.

So what's the big deal about watching a bunch of Americans play an American game in the USA while being inundated during the ubiquitous breaks in play (the clock never runs more than a few seconds at a time in American football) with ridiculous amounts of advertising?  Are people really that desperate to see commercials? I simply don't understand.  I never have.  Maybe I never will.

Sure, I can see having the lads over for a beer and pretzels piss-up, but I don't need the TV on for that, and I certainly don't need a football game in February.  This is Canada - surely there's hockey if a sport must be a part of such a gathering.  At least then we can watch Canadians play a Canadian game, possibly even in Canada.

What's funnier still is that the Super Bowl touts itself as THE premier sports event in the world, but it doesn't command the audience of a FIFA championship... it's only watched in the US and Canada, for the most part and that means mostly in the USA.  Outside of that little bubble, nobody cares about US football.

I do hope that people who had gatherings had a good time.  Personally, I spent the time polishing up my resumé, making some amateur radio contacts, and working on my financial status in EVE Online... apparently with some Europeans and a few Americans who didn't care about the Super Bowl either. 

Yeah, I'll probably write a whinge like this when it comes to the Stanley Cup in June or July or whenever hockey finally ends these days.

Free Speech on trial in the Netherlands

We often look to Europe, and the Netherlands in particular, as the model of a tolerant and open society, free of religious and conservative bollocks that so often taints our own culture.  Unfortunately, the winds of change are blowing in the Netherlands and it's an ill wind indeed.

Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, is now on trial for offending Muslims.  His horrid crime?  Making statements like:

Those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation. I have never used violence.

The truth of that statement, however, is not the issue... Wilders is being tried because people were offended - nobody denies the veracity of his statements.

Also at issue is his movie Fitna.  Apparently displaying Islamic douchebaggery to the world is a crime in the Netherlands.  Again, it's not the veracity of the things in the film that is being questioned, it's that he said them at all.

I make this post because Canada is not far behind.  We sacrifice people on the altar of political correctness not usually because people are performing flagrantly racist, discriminatory and hurtful acts, but rather because they say things that offend people, EVEN IF THOSE THINGS ARE TRUE.  That's what's happening with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and that's what happens here.  At least Wilders gets a public trial in court... in Canada he'd be jacked up in a secret kangaroo court called a Human Rights Commission.

What kind of culture suppresses truth?  Certainly not a healthy one.  All Canadians should be watching the Wilders trial with interest.  We have hate speech laws that could easily be perverted into the same kind of truth suppression.  What's really bad here is that Wilders is an elected politician... that's right, his political enemies are using a perverse law to suppress political opinion.

In a free and democratic society, nobody has the right to not be offended.  You may not like what your neighbour says, but if it's true, suck it up buttercup.  Part of being free is being allowed to speak the truth.  People who can't handle the truth simply don't deserve to be here.

The pet every man needs...

Yes, this is a well-trained dog...  It even closes the door!

(CLICK HERE)

Enjoy.

100,000 hits!

Sometime on 1 Feb, 2010, this blog passed 100,000 total hits.  I hope I have been entertaining and I appreciate the traffic.  My thanks to all who have visited!

Of perverts and Facebook

If you're a Facebook user, you've probably seen this meme circulating, somewhat virally, among the various status files of people you know:

WARNING!!!!! Go in to your PRIVACY settings and click block list, type in AUTOMATIC BLOCK, there's 3 names there DELETE them they're apparantly taking pictures of our kids off our fb and there meant to be peadophiles, They were on mine and prob on yours too. 3 FOREIGN NAMES block them 1 at a time. PUT THIS ON YOUR STATUS TELL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Now, aside from the general idea that anything that tells you to display it publicly and tell all your family and friends is almost assuredly bollocks, I'd like to look at the general claim that it makes: That there are perverts on Facebook looking for pictures of your kids.

There are really two parts to the claim.  The easier part is that there are people you don't know looking for pictures of your kids.  That's probably true, but only in the general sense.  There are over 350 million Facebook users (according to Facebook itself).  The odds of any one random user specifically targetting YOU for pictures of YOUR kids is vanishingly small.  Generally, people may stumble across pictures of your kids (and I'll deal with that in a minute), but the specific risk to you or your children is very, very, very, very small.

So the bigger question is how many perverts there are on Facebook.  Given that the population of Facebook is 14% greater than the population of the entire United States of America, it's fair to say that the number of pedophiles on Facebook is likely to be about 14% greater than the entire number of pedophiles in the United States of America.  Statistically speaking, pedophilia has a background level where not specifically encouraged by culture (like ancient Greece), so that's a reasoned guess.  Unfortunately, there are not good statistics on what that level is.  So let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say that 1 person in 10000 is a pedophile.  Pedophiles are overwhelmingly men, but there are women and we've seen a few get arrested in the news lately (usually female teachers boffing male students), so let's put the gender split at 95% men.

What does that mean?  With about 175 million women on Facebook, and using these estimated numbers, we can expect that there are 875 female pedophiles on Facebook right now, and over 16000 male pedophiles on Facebook right now.  Sounds scary doesn't it? 

But... like any population, there are other "undesirables" too.  For example, this site suggests that in the USA there are 25-50 active serial killers in the USA at any given time.  ACTIVE... that's not counting the ones whose crimes haven't been noticed/collated into being called a serial killer, and the ones who haven't quite flipped out yet.  It's very likely, therefore, that Facebook's similar sized population harbours 25-50 active serial killers at any given time, plus serial-killers-to-be!

So really, does the existence of these people on Facebook matter to you, the friendly Facebook user?  Personally, I don't worry about them.  You're no more likely to be targetted on Facebook by some pervert or nutjob than you are likely to be targetted by someone picking your name out of a huge phone book.  It's possible, sure, but very unlikely.  And best of all, Facebook gives you some options to help reduce the likelihood of these people targetting you.

First and foremost, don't accept every friend request you get.  If you don't know the person, don't friend them.  If some random person walks up to your house and bangs on the door, you don't let them in to poke around your stuff do you?  Why would you friend someone you have no clue about?  Seriously, this simple, best way to increase your Facebook security actually requires that you NOT do something.  It's so easy to ignore friend requests from people you don't know.

Second... pictures.  I've talked about keeping your stuff visible to your friends only, and I'll reiterate it here.  Hit the photos tab and click "Album privacy", then set your photos to "Friends only".  You'll not only immediately prevent any pervert, non-friends from seeing your stuff, you'll also block people from your work from seeing your drunken, bra-on-head photos from last Friday's piss-up too (even though you should never post crap like that on the internet because The Internet Never Forgets... Ever).

Third, once you've set all your photos to "friends only" or something more appropriate, visit the Settings link and select Privacy.  Go through all the little bits of information and make sure you have them set the way you really want them... Do you really want your Contact Information, for example, visible to everyone?  how about friends of friends?  friends only?  Go through these settings and make sure they reflect your desires.

If you do this, you aren't going to have to worry about random weirdos trolling through your stuff, nor will you have to worry about Google picking up your info and blasting it to the world.  And more importantly, it's a lot easier than trying to find out who the current list of pedophiles contains and manually adding them to your blocked list every day.

Do you know these people?

Perhaps these people are you?  If you know who they are, contact me through this site and let me know if they want the photo back?  It was found by my wife in a library book she bought at Value Village.  If they want the photo back, I'm happy to return it, but I need to know how.

-Squid

Saludos desde la República Dominicana

The Squid is reporting in from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic today!

Had to charge Beth´s iPod, so here I am at the internet café at 10 dollars (US) an hour entering a blog post.  This has, of course, removed me from beach time.  In any case, it appears to be working, so it is a 10 dollar lesson to remember to bring a charger with a USB connection on it.

It has been a good time so far.  I have learned a few things so far.

Most recently, for example, I have learned that a Spanish keyboard does not have an obvious dollar sign, despite there being one marked above the 4.

As you can imagine, the weather here is vastly superior to the weather at home.  It did rain for a few minutes a couple days ago, but for the most part it has been clear, 28 C give or take, with a sea breeze.  Bountiful bosoms bounce along the beach.  Unfortunately so too do gentlemen who should have better sense than to display themselves in banana hammocks.  Oh well, one´s hat can always be pulled over one´s head when necessary.

The food is decent.  This is a nice resort.  I´ll probably have more on that later with pictures when I can extract them from my camera... I hadn´t expected to end up in front of a computer until next week, so I didn´t bring the appropriate cabling.

Nights have generally been clear, although I haven´t had the binos out for stargazing yet (only beachgazing).