Water

(and some great photography)

Soccer for Newbs

In honour of the World Cup 2014, here's everything I know about the "Beautiful Game"......

What dad should've taught you

If you're lucky enough to have had a great dad who guided you along the way, a lot of these will be familiar. If you didn't learn these growing up, then pay attention.

It's not a comprehensive list by any stretch but it certainly covers some of the basics your father should've taught you......

Zombieland for real ?

Are you shit'n me ? Seriously ? This quote from the Miami Herald caught my eye and I couldn't believe it !!

Meanwhile, on the mainland side of the causeway, allegedly the quiet side this weekend, a naked man was shot to death by police after he was found chewing on another man’s face.

Here's the full article but man-ohhh-man.

Wild weekend: party on the Beach, police shooting on mainland

 

Police knew it would be a memorable Saturday. Little did they know how memorable.

Rashanti Le, left, and Tiffany Spencer, right, of Washington, D.C., at the intersection of Collins Avenue and 11th Street at Miami Beach on Saturday, May 26, 2012. Urban Beach Weekend is a large Hip Hop festival. Tessa Lighty / Miami Herald Staff

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BY DAVID SMILEY, LUISA YANEZ AND JULIE K. BROWN

JBROWN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

The scene in South Florida was surreal Saturday.

On one side of the MacArthur Causeway, the side where police had braced for trouble, scantily clad men and women poured beer and testosterone into the streets, cafes and clubs, while thumping to the loud, restless beats of South Beach.

Meanwhile, on the mainland side of the causeway, allegedly the quiet side this weekend, a naked man was shot to death by police after he was found chewing on another man’s face.

Under the hot sun Saturday in South Beach, long before the nighttime partying began, revelers took videos, posed for photographs and sipped basketball-sized cocktails, strolling Ocean Drive for the annual hip-hop/rap extravaganza known as Urban Beach Week. The event, which traditionally draws upward of 250,000 people from all over the country and from all walks of life, is known as much for its over-the-top fun as it is for its music and celebrity mix.

Ladies in bikinis, fishnet dresses and barely-there bra tops strolled in throngs (and thongs), some of them daring enough to wear spiked heels. Men with low-riding shorts and jeans mingled on the strip, talking game and getting turned away more often than not.

Police presence was heavy but relaxed. There were officers on golf carts, bikes and atop viewing towers. Throughout the day there were several arrests for minor offenses. Those detained were processed in a state-of-the-art police mobile unit set up on Ocean Drive.

Despite rumors that Beach cops had an arrest quota of 2,000 people per day, there were only 93 arrests Friday. Ironically, though South Beach residents braced for possible chaos as in year’s past, the bloodshed was miles away in Miami Saturday afternoon.

It was there, across the McArthur Causeway, just south of The Miami Herald building, that a naked man attacked another man and allegedly began eating the victim’s face. A woman who saw what was happening first flagged down a Miami Herald security guard, then a Miami police officer who happened by.

Police said the officer approached the naked man, ordered him to step away and when he continued to chew the man’s face, the officer shot him dead. The victim was rushed to the hospital, where he was in critical condition Saturday.

The incident made driving east on the Causeway a traffic nightmare, but the party went on despite weeks of buildup that focused mostly on an intense crowd and traffic enforcement plan that included altering South Beach traffic into a one-way loop and closing the eastbound MacArthur Causeway to one lane.

Though the crowd was thinner than year’s past, it was no less risqué.

“I love sex! I just can’t get enough!” bachelorette Yvonne Sosa, condoms dangling from her veil, shouted into Reginald Allison’s megaphone just after midnight Saturday.

Sosa, dressed in white, was in town from Nebraska, a lawyer getting married in a month partying on along with a half dozen friends, family, and legal clerks and secretaries at the law firm where she works.

Allison, a Morehouse College graduate from Atlanta, was promoting a party bus roving South Beach from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The two converged at 11th Street and Ocean Drive for a classic about-to-be-married moment during a weekend known for raucous parties.

But Allison said raucous isn’t the word that comes to mind.

“It’s real chill,” said Allison, who said he bought the megaphone at a store on Biscayne Boulevard.

It’s unclear just how many people were in South Beach’s entertainment district Saturday night, hours before massing inside the clubs. On Collins Avenue, foot traffic was light but cars were packed bumper to bumper. Two men in a baby-blue, 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible rolled north amid rented motorcycles and Dodge Caravans, while Bentleys, Lamborghinis and a purple sedan with Barney the dinosaur detailed on the side rolled south down Washington Avenue.

That was before the lime green Laffy Taffy ride hit Washington.

Cars blared everything from Tupac and Jay Z and Kanye West to Marvin Gaye, and rolled slowly in one-way loops, implemented Friday, nearly one year after police say a driver refused to stop and then tried to run over several cops, leading to a shootout on the street that killed the driver and wounded four bystanders.

With this weekend the one-year anniversary, much of the media attention around the annual street and club parties focused on police.

But the news of shooting and a police crackdown didn’t reach Nebraska, or New Jersey, or London, where Shereyne Shillingford and eight friends came from for their own bachelorette party.

“We were going to come last week and we moved our flight at the last minute” to be on South Beach for Urban Beach Week, she said.

Over on Washington Avenue, a few storefronts from Mansion, Jimmy Slauson and a buddy burned blunts of pot down to the nub. Cops were swarming the area, but they said they weren’t concerned about police.

“We’re not really trying to test the cops,” said Slauson, from New Jersey, before an officer walked up.

He tossed the blunt.

Keshha Hakelison, 36, of Gainesville, has been coming to Urban Beach Week for the past 10 years.

She said the increased police presence was disturbing.

“This year it changed drastically because of the police. I feel like they are overdoing their protectiveness. I understand they are supposed to protect and serve but I really feel like they are trying to knock everybody’s opportunity to have fun.”

Hakelison said she liked to come to get away without having to spend a lot of money by going to another state. And she enjoys the camaraderie.

“It’s entertainment,’’ she said. “I love it. I love to see my sisters and brothers come together, embrace each other. Just where we can see each other in different shapes, sizes, colors. Just to enjoy being around each other, partying together and having a good time."

So far, the arrest of New York Knicks’ guard J.R. Smith, and a shooting in which no one was injured at 12th Street and Collins Avenue Thursday night, remain the rockiest parts of the beachside weekend.

“It’s pretty quiet, right?” said Miami Beach Commissioner Ed Tobin, a police academy graduate who has been a critic of the event.

Unofficial occupancy figures compiled by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau show that Miami Beach hotels were just 65 percent full Thursday, compared to 67 percent on the same day last year.

Local business were mixed.

On Saturday, restaurant hostesses aggressively tried to attract customers into their eateries.

Some restaurants were offering deals almost half off normal South Beach prices. Appetizers for $3.99, a steak meal for $25 and a lobster tail and shrimp dinner for $35.

All restaurants along Ocean Drive were surrounded by metal barricades to control crowds, but the cash registers were not ringing like last year.

“It used to be like bumping into people,’’ observed Charlotte Smith, who has been an attendee since 2000. “There’s not enough eye candy for us to look at and flirt with, said Jessica Reynolds from Fort Pierce.

Miami Herald writers Carissa Harris, David Ovalle, Daniela Guzman, Kate Howard and Margaux Herrera contributed to this report.

Great Advertising

12 Most Embarrassing Ads

Published on Today 4/29/2012 under Cool Ads - by Gracie Murano

A little too close to reality. (Link)

No more living in denial about the size of your waist line, thanks to this fantastic, albeit terrifying, guerrilla marketing initiative from the health club chain, Fitness First. Unsuspecting commuters in the Netherlands are faced with viewing their body weight in bright lights - quite literally - when they take a seat at this Rotterdam bus stop. Scary, to say the very least, but extraordinarily clever, and likely to increase membership numbers at the local Fitness First. The brainchild of Netherlands' agency N=5, the initiative takes the concept of guerilla marketing to a whole new level. (Link)

The best helpers are ones that you don't have to pay. The Canadian ad agency Rethink makes good use of bald commuters on rapid transit trains by exposing their heads for all to see.

VIP Gym thought images of a flabby, cellulite-ridden butt topped with a pair of love handles would be enough to make people want to "get up and run." Glued to chairs in restaurants and cafes, the poster gives you the uncomfortable feeling that you're seeing way more of strangers than you would like. (Via)

When costumers bend to read the little text it says:

"At this moment, you bum is completely exposed. If it were in a sexy pair of jeans, it would attract attention all the time!"

Okay, it isn't a promotional product, but it is a clever way to make a poster interactive. The poster is purposely mounted so it droops over itself. When a curious passerby lifts it up, their personal smell is called into question. They get props for being funny, and for making a simple piece of paper into an interactive ad. (Link)

A Coca Cola Guerrilla Marketing Magnet Ad to promote Coca Cola's grip bottles. The ad places magnets behind the billboard so when passersby stand too close with metal in their pockets, they are magically attracted to the ad. (Link)

Condomi Erotic Shopping Bag. Advertising Agency: Draft FCB Kobza, Vienna, Austria (Link)

This guerrilla ad campaign wouldn't stand a chance of flying in the US.

This man doesn't look too happy to be in the ad. (Link)

A floating afro sits at head-level behind a bus stop seat, just at the right height to make it look like anyone who sits there has quite an impressive head of hair. This poster by ‘Real Hip Hop' is definitely an eye-catcher. (Link)

A huge interactive light box was mounted in the Seoul Sindorim Subway Station, the entrance way to a multiplex electronics shopping mall where various brands compete. Over 500,000 commuters use the station daily, making it the perfect place for an ad like this. Huddled together as if at a premiere, the paparazzi appear to be jostling and competing for the best celebrity shot. The celebrities, however, are the ones walking by; they automatically trigger a deluge of flashing camera lights. The accidental superstars then follow the red carpet all the way out of the station and into a mall, where there's a Nikon shop conveniently located inside.

If I were shy, I wouldn't be too happy about passing by this ad. (Link)

Programming Languages are Like Women

There are so many programming languages available that it can be 
very  difficult to get to know them all well enough to pick the 
right one for you.  On the other hand most men know what kind of 
woman appeals to them. So here  is a handy guide for many of the 
popular programming languages that describes  what kind of women 
they would be if programming languages were women.

 Assembler - A female track star who holds all the world speed 
records.  She  is hard and bumpy, and so is not that pleasant to 
embrace.  She can cook up  any meal, but needs a complete and 
detailed recipe.  She is not beautiful or  educated, and speaks in 
monosyllables like "MOV, JUMP, INC".  She has a  fierce and 
violent temper that make her the choice of last resort.

 FORTRAN - Your grey-haired grandmother.  People make fun of her 
just because  she is old, but if you take the time to listen, you 
can learn from her  experiences and her mistakes.  During her 
lifetime she has acquired many  useful skills in sewing and 
cooking (subroutine libraries) That no younger  women can match, 
so be thankful she is still around.  She has a notoriously  bad 
temper and when angered will start yelling and throwing dishes.  
It was  mostly her bad temper that made grandad search for another 
wife.

 COBOL - A plump secretary.  She talks far too much, and most of 
what she says  can be ignored.  She works hard and long hours, but 
can't handle really  complicated jobs.  She has a short and 
unpredictable temper, so no one really  likes working with her.  
She can cook meals for a huge family, but only knows  bland 
recipes.

 BASIC - The horny divorcee that lives next door.  Her specialty 
is seducing  young boys and it seems she is always readily 
available for them.  She  teaches them many amazing things, or at 
least they seem amazing because it is  their first experience.  
She is not that young herself, but because she was  their first 
lover the boys always remember her fondly.  Her cooking and  
sewing skills are mediocre, but largely irrelevant, it's the 
frolicking that  the boys like.  The opinion that adults have of 
Mrs.  BASIC is varied.  Shockingly, some fathers actually 
introduce their own sons to this immoral  woman!  But generally 
the more righteous adults try to correct the badly  influenced 
young men by introducing them to well behaved women like Miss  
Pascal.

 PL/I - A bordello madam.  She wears silk dresses, diamonds, furs 
and red high  heels.  At one time she seemed very attractive, but 
now she just seems  overweight and tacky.  Tastes change.

 C - A lady executive.  An avid jogger, very healthy, and not too 
talkative.  Is an good cook if you like spicy food.  Unless you 
double check everything  you say (through LINT) you can unleash 
her fierce temper.  Her daughter C++  is still quite young and 
prone to tantrums, but it seems that she will grow  up into a fine 
young woman of milder temper and more sophisticated character.

 ALGOL 60 - Your father's wartime sweetheart, petite, well 
proportioned, and  sweet tempered.  She disappeared mysteriously 
during the war, but your dad  still talks about her shapely form 
and their steamy romance.  He never  actually tasted much of her 
cooking.

 Pascal - A grammar school teacher, and Algol 60's younger sister.  
Like her  sister she is petite and attractive, but very bossy.  
She is a good cook but  only if the recipe requires no more than 
one pot (module).

 Modula II - A high-school teacher and Pascal's daughter.  Very 
much like her  mother, but she has learned to cook with more than 
one pot.

 ALGOL 68 - Algol 60's niece.  A high-society woman, well educated 
and terse.  Few men can fully understand her when she talks, and 
her former lovers still  discuss her mysterious personality.  She 
is very choosy about her romances  and won't take just any man as 
her lover.  She hasn't been seen lately, and  rumor has it that 
she died in a fall from an ivory tower.

 LISP - She is an aging beatnik, who lives in a rural commune with 
her hippie  cousins SMALLTALK and FORTH.  Many men (mostly college 
students) who have visited the farmhouse,-- enthusiastically 
praise the natural food, and perpetual love-ins that take place 
there.  Others criticize the long cooking times, and the abnormal 
sexual postures (prefix and postfix). Although these women seldom 
have full-time jobs, when they do work, their employers praise 
them for their imagination, but usually not for their efficiency. 

APL - A fancy caterer specializing in Greek food.  She can cook 
delicious meals for rows and rows of tables with dozens of people 
at each table.  She doesn't talk much, as that would just slow her 
work down.  Few people can understand her recipes, since they are 
in a foreign language, and are all recorded in mirror writing.

LOGO - A grade-school art teacher.  She is just the kind of 
teacher that you wish you had when you were young.  She is shapely 
and patient, but not an interesting conversationalist.  She can 
cook up delicious kiddie snacks, but not full-course meals.

LUCID & PROLOG - These clever teenagers show a new kind of cooking 
skill. They can cook-up fine meals without the use of recipes, 
working solely from a description of the desired meal (declarative 
cooking).  Many men are fascinated by this and have already 
proposed marriage.  Others complain that the girls work very 
slowly, and that often the description of the meal must be just as 
long as a recipe would be.  It is hard to predict what these girls 
will be like when they are fully mature.

Ada - A WAC colonel built like an amazon.  She is always setting 
strict rules, but if you follow them, she keeps her temper.  She 
is quite talkative, always spouting army regulations, and using 
obscure military talk.  You gotta love her though, because the 
army says so.

Guilty as charged...or maybe not...In Canada

Democracy - The pipe dream

I've been in an ongoing debate with my mother about the merits of "democracy" as we know it.

"Gogs in a wheel" OR "Jobs be damned...be a good person"

These are lessons that I've been taught over the years and ideals that I've taken to heart. I don't wanna be a cog in a wheel. Dammit, I am the freakin' wheel, not a cog !!

Free trade, global trade, global banking and all those other theories that are supposed to benefit us all have run amok. We, here in the west have lost our minds. Money has become the new god. Babylon has returned and it's a lot bigger now. We spend more on the military, against a threat that's amorphous, we've been duped into believing that civil liberty is exchangeable for security and we've been arrested for arguing against the bullshit of it all.

I'm a Canadian, a once proud Canadian. I am now left wondering where my country's leadership is steering me (and my fellow 30M compatriots). We kept out of Iraq because it wasn't "right" which turned out to be prudent. But we leapt in with both feet into Afghanistan which is now becoming our version of Vietnam (part deux). No win, no victory, only ongoing losses in lives, souls and yes...Money.

I'm rambling because I'm pissed off. I have so many things to scream about BUT, like a "nice" person, I've kept it under wraps. Today, no more. I'm tired of being nice. Tired of the system working me over.

Tired of watching those that don't care about me making decisions that will directly hurt me.

To the 99% I say I am with you. To the 1%, watch your back.

Revolution is coming and it ain't gonna be kind.

Capitalism was meant to offer each and every one of us a path to better ourselves but what it's become is a path for us all to better improve a few others. The media would have you believe that the beneficiaries of our current economic & political system are you & I.....Really?

Just out of curiosity, when was the last raise you got? Did you get a bonus last year? Are you improving the whole work/life balance thing? Answer NO. You're working longer, harder, for less and with less job security! But we're being told that if we run the wheel a little bit harder next month, things may improve...........Sure.....For the bottom line.

The Europeans took it too far to the "left" and we here in North America have taken it too far to the "right" but there is a workable middle ground. We don't need to bankrupt our society to achieve it either. Everyone can have a slice of cake and be happy. It's the greedy MotherFu##ers who need to be restrained.

Guess what's on my mind today

Silvio's finest...God I love democracy

ROME—Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned as prime minister on Saturday after dominating Italy for 17 years with a mix of political talent and brazen behaviour, has a sense of humour that often landed him in trouble.

Here are some of his memorable quotes:

Nov. 2011: Berlusconi comments on the state of Italy’s economy. “Life in Italy is life in a prosperous country. We see that on every occasion, consumption has not gone down, the restaurants are full, you have trouble booking seats on aeroplanes, holiday areas are totally booked out on long weekends. I don’t think that if you went to live in Italy that Italy is feeling anything that could resemble a serious crisis.”

Oct. 2011: In remarks to party deputies in parliament, Berlusconi suggests his ruling PDL party should rename itself “Forza Gnocca!” a play on the name of his original Forza Italia! (Go Italy!) party, using a slang term for female genitals.

Sept. 2011: In widely reported wiretapped conversations, Berlusconi brags of fending off a line of young women outside his door and “doing only eight girls, because I couldn’t do more.”

Nov. 2010: “As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it’s better to like beautiful girls than to be gay,” he tells a meeting at a motorcycle industry show in Milan.

April 2009: During a visit to survivors of an earthquake in the central Abruzzo region, who were staying in emergency tents, Berlusconi says: “They should look at it as a weekend of camping.”

Nov. 2008: Berlusconi hails Barack Obama as “handsome, young and also suntanned”, after he was elected the United States’ first black president.

Feb. 2006: “I am the Jesus Christ of politics,” Italian media quote Berlusconi as telling supporters. “I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.”

Feb. 2006: “Only Napoleon did more than I have done,” he tells a TV talk show. “But I am definitely taller.”

Jan. 2006: Berlusconi promises to give up sex until the next election. “Thank you dear Father Massimiliano,” he tells a preacher who praised him for defending family values. “I’ll try not to let you down and I promise you two and a half months of complete sexual abstinence until April 9.”

June 2005: Berlusconi says he used his charms to persuade Finland’s president, Tarja Halonen, to give up her country’s claim to host the new European Food Safety Authority. “I had to use all my playboy tactics, even if they have not been used for some time,” he said. Finnish ambassador protests.

Sept. 2004: “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday in (internal) exile,” Berlusconi tells Britain’s Spectator magazine, replying “yes” when asked if he thought the World War II dictator was “benign”.

July 2003: “Mr. Schulz, I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of Kapo. You’d be perfect,” Berlusconi told socialist German lawmaker Martin Schulz, who was heckling him during his debut at the European Parliament. A kapo was a concentration camp inmate who was given privileges for supervising prisoner work gangs.

June 2003: “One citizen is equal to another (in the eyes of the law) but perhaps this one is slightly more equal than the others, given that 50 percent of Italians have given him the responsibility of governing the country,” he says, referring to himself, during an appearance at his corruption trial in Milan.

Dec. 2002: “The most keen can certainly find a second job, maybe unofficial,” Berlusconi says, encouraging laid-off Fiat workers to seek employment on the black market.

Feb. 2002: During a group photograph at an informal EU summit in Spain, Berlusconi raises two fingers behind the head of the Spanish foreign minister, Josep Pique, in the traditional Latin gesture for a cuckold.

Oct. 2001: Berlusconi causes an outcry in the Muslim world when he says the West should be aware of its own “superiority”. “We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion,” he said. “This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries.”

Wealthy, Un-Educated & Broke (but armed to the teeth...)

The USA is bemoaning it's lost status as a world power....and one of the reasons is

Farewell to an old friend over the years. Andy Rooney

First off, I'd like to express how deeply & truly sad I am at the death of Andy Rooney from CBS' 60 Minutes.

I grew up watching that show every Sunday night. If you knew me as a kid, it was playing in my home every Sunday when you were over for some of my mom's barely edible steaks, if you knew me as a young adult then it was playing every Sunday over Chinese/Pizza takeout AND if you had known me on Oct 6, 2011 when he did his last broadcast, I was there watching as well.

Andy represented to me a kindly, grumpy, wise and yet childish grandfather. He said some pretty pertinent shit, called it like he saw it and for all his faults, he was at least honest with himself and his audience.

I will miss him and his bushy eyebrows every Sunday from now on.

RIP Andy, you will be missed in my household.

Some quotes stolen from CNN (don't worry...they can afford it)


(CNN) -- Andy Rooney, who died Saturday at the age of 92, had the last word each week on the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes." Here are some of his great lines from those essays, along with a few others, that reveal his talent as a writer and the dry wit that made him famous.

"I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got." -- from an essay on his eyebrows, Nov. 24, 1996

"We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers. More college graduates ought to become plumbers or electricians, then go home at night and read Shakespeare." -- from an essay on finding a good job, March 21, 2010

"We didn't shock them, and we didn't awe them in Baghdad. The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him." -- on the start of the war in Iraq in 2003

"I recently bought this new laptop to use when I travel. Look at that. Fits right into my briefcase. It weighs less than three pounds. I lose that much getting mad, waiting to get on the plane through security at the airport." -- from an essay on computers, Feb. 11, 2009

"We can all be prouder to be human beings, because that's what they were. They make up for a lot of liars, cheats, and terrorists among us." -- on the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger after it exploded on takeoff in 1986

"Not many people in this world are as lucky as I've been. ... All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." -- from Rooney's final "60 Minutes" essay, Oct. 2, 2011

"One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents." -- from Rooney's first "60 Minutes" essay, July 2, 1978

"The third rule of life is this: Everything you buy today is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it was yesterday." -- from an essay on coffee cans, Oct. 23, 1988

"A lot of these products are actually pretty good. But why are they always trying to con us with the contrived pictures on the box that don't look anything like you get when you eat it?" -- from an essay on the pictures on food packages, Dec. 4, 1988

"I don't know anything offhand that mystifies Americans more than the cotton they put in pill bottles. Why do they do it? Are you supposed to put the cotton back in once you've taken a pill out?" -- from an essay on pill bottles, Oct. 12, 1986

"I understand shipping -- you have to expect to pay for the stamps or for the freight company -- but what's this handling they always have? How much does handling cost, anyway? I don't want a lot of people handling something I'm going to buy before I get it. How much would it cost if you didn't handle it before you sent it to me?" -- from an essay on fine print, March 12, 1989

"Dogs are nicer than people." -- from an essay on the true things in life, Dec. 5, 2007

"I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And I got to the war, and saw the Germans, and I changed my mind. I decided we were right going into World War II." -- from a CBS interview with Morley Safer, Oct. 2, 2011

"I am interested in details. If you go into anything far enough, you get into the details of it, and people turn out to be interested in what makes things work." -- from a 2010 interview in The Colgate Scene

Boggling, Beautiful & Insane !! Base Jumping & Flying Squirrels

Laws for 21st century: A guide to Canada’s proposed cyber investigation bills

Kathryn Blaze Carlson Oct 22, 2011 – 10:35 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 23, 2011 11:01 AM ET


Canadians spend more time online than anyone else in the world — an average of 44 hours per month — and nearly a third of the population owns a smartphone, spending more than 17 hours on the device each week. So when the Conservative government reintroduces three pieces of lawful access legislation aimed at giving police greater powers and more tools to conduct investigations using new technologies, Canadians should have a clear understanding of what is on the table. However, much of the rhetoric circulating online about the legislation is patently untrue, distracting from the meat of the bills and the very real privacy implications at stake. Although it is unclear whether the bills will appear exactly as they did when they were first tabled in the spring, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said this month his government is committed to reintroducing the lawful access legislation. Post reporter Kathryn Blaze Carlson has studied the previous legislation and spoken to experts. Here, she offers up eight things it would do — and three it would not:

1. CREATING “BACK DOORS” FOR POLICE INTERCEPTION The Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act would require telecommunications and Internet service providers to be capable of decrypting, decoding, and preserving historic and real-time online and telephone communications, essentially creating built-in “back doors” for police interception. Some providers already have this capability, but they preserve information on their servers for different lengths of time depending on company policy. Some smaller providers do not have this capability at all, particularly certain ones in northern Ontario and Quebec, said Christopher Parsons, a doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria studying digital surveillance. Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, said it is “very frustrating from an investigative perspective” when police obtain a court order to intercept communications, only to learn the relevant Internet service provider is technically incapable of digging up the communications data. The act would also give the RCMP and CSIS the authority to conduct background security checks on any employees who are involved in intercepting communications. Mr. Parsons said it is unclear whether the legislation will target anything more than the “low-hanging fruit” because savvy criminals will be able to evade authorities by encrypting their messages and sending them through several network nodes.


2. OBTAINING BASIC CUSTOMER INFORMATION WITHOUT A WARRANT Police could demand that telecommunications and Internet service providers turn over a customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and Internet protocol address — and they could do so without a warrant under exceptional circumstances. “When Internet service providers hear ‘exceptional circumstances,’ they hear ‘whenever (police) want,’” Mr. Parsons said. Michael Geist, chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, said that sort of customer information could be linked with other bits of information to build a detailed profile. It can also be used to “out” someone using a pseudonym in an online chat forum. “All of a sudden, you go from ‘HoneyBunny14’ or ‘BlackAnarchist’ to ‘John Smith’ living at a particular address with a particular phone number,” Mr. Parsons said, adding that social activists are concerned police will use the provision to monitor people organizing legal protests or expressing dissent online. Beyond that, the target is not necessarily the only person using a particular Internet protocol address, so others could be inadvertently monitored at a later stage in the investigation. Mr. Stamatakis said this sort of additional power would be exercised to investigate only the most serious crimes, including child pornography, organized crime and terrorism. “The legislation recognizes the technology criminals are using today,” he said, echoing Mr. Toews comments earlier this month that the Criminal Code contains out-of-date language such as the word “telegraph.”

3. CREATING NEW POLICE POWERS TO OBTAIN COMMUNICATIONS DATA Without a warrant, police could make a “preservation demand” requiring telecommunications and Internet service providers to single out a customer and preserve for 90 days what Dwayne Winseck, a Carleton University communications professor who has studied the Internet for two decades, called “meta data.” So-called meta data is communications information generated during the creation, transmission or reception of a communication including the type, time, duration, origin, and destination of the communication. Police would then have to ask a judge for a “production order” to actually obtain the preserved information. Once police get the court order, they could, for example, find out who a person called on their cell phone, the duration of the call, and when the call was placed. Importantly, the proposed legislation excludes the actual content of the conversation. Once police have a copy of what they want, the service providers must destroy the information. The warantless provision is a welcome one, Mr. Stamatakis said, because it acts as a stop-gap measure while police work to obtain a warrant — a lengthy, labour-intensive process at times.

4. CUSTOMERS MAY NEVER KNOW IF, OR WHY, THEY WERE TARGETED The proposed surveillance legislation says authorities could prohibit telecommunications and Internet service providers from telling a customer that he or she was the subject of information disclosures. The potential cumulative effect of all this legislation, said Mr. Geist, is self-censorship: “What we’re creating is nothing like the Chinese firewall … but I think it could have a chilling effect in terms of people’s willingness to express themselves online, even if they’re not doing anything illegal.”

5. POSSIBLY INCREASED COSTS FOR CELL PHONE AND INTERNET SERVICE If telecommunications and Internet service providers are forced to upgrade their technology and train their staff to use it, then their capital and operating costs will inevitably climb. “Customers might end up paying the added cost for something that could be used against them at any time,” Mr. Parsons said, adding the requirement could also squeeze out smaller, cash-strapped providers.

6. TRACKING DIALED NUMBERS WITHOUT A WARRANT The proposed legislation would allow police to install and use number recorders without a warrant in “exigent circumstances.” A number recorder, which records the telephone numbers associated with outgoing and incoming calls, would be installed remotely by a telecommunications provider at their call centre hub. The installation can last up to 60 days, but it could be extended to one year if a warrant is obtained and if the investigation involves organized crime or terrorism.

7. COVERTLY ACTIVATING DEVICES TO TRACK CELL PHONES AND VEHICLES The proposed legislation brings police powers into the 21st century by tacitly acknowledging that vehicles and mobile phones — and therefore the people using them — can be tracked using GPS or cell towers. The Criminal Code currently says police can, with a warrant or without one in an emergency, “install, maintain and remove a tracking device in or on any thing, including a thing carried, used or worn by any person.” The proposed bill would extend that list to include the power to “activate” a device, “including covertly.” Mr. Parsons said this allows police to “take advantage of existing technologies,” and said he would not object to the provision if it ensured there would be court oversight.

8. OPENING THE DOOR TO “FISHING EXPEDITIONS” The legislation surrounding preservation and production orders would allow police to get information from telecommunications and Internet service providers based on “reasonable grounds to suspect” the information would “assist an investigation.” The existing Criminal Code does not offer a similarly vague suspicion, but rather stipulates “reasonable grounds to believe” an offence “has been or is suspected to have been committed” or that the information will “afford evidence respecting the commission of the offence.” Mr. Winseck said this opens the door for police to go on “fishing expeditions” and potentially “turns the relationship between the cops and (Internet Service Providers) into a routine one.”

… AND THREE MISCONCEPTIONS

1. HYPERLINKING TO HATE PROPAGANDA WILL BE CRIMINALIZED When the legislative summary of one of the bills surfaced saying “the offences of public incitement of hatred and willful promotion of hatred may be committed… by creating a hyperlink that directs web surfers to a website where hate material is posted,” onlookers criticized the bill as overly far-reaching. However, the actual bill makes no explicit reference to hyperlinking, instead expanding the definition of “communicating” hate material to include “making available.” It is true the vague definition of “communicating” could capture posting a link to another website, but a recent Supreme Court libel decision will likely quiet that fear: The judges decided unanimously this week that a person cannot be held responsible for what appears on a hyperlinked site.

2. POLICE WILL GET NEW POWERS TO LISTEN IN ON PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS
The legislation does not extend police powers to intercept the actual content of private communications, for example what was said in a telephone call or written in an email. Mr. Toews has said those claims — put forward by online privacy activists — are a “complete fabrication.” Also, the Criminal Code already allows police to intercept private communications without a warrant, so long as the situation is urgent and the interception could prevent serious harm to a person or property.

3. INTERNET PROVIDERS WILL MONITOR ALL CANADIANS, ALL THE TIME
The government has been accused of embarking on warrantless online wiretapping where Canadians will be constantly monitored, but Mr. Geist said on his blog these charges amount to “political softball.” Yes, telecommunications and Internet service providers will need the capability to preserve information on all users, regardless of whether or not they are subject to an investigation. But those providers must only preserve and produce information relating to users who are actually targeted by police.

National Post kcarlson@nationalpost.com

Damn Straight Skippy !!

In an interview published Monday, taken in Times Square during Saturday’s global day of protests, Pulitzer-winning writer Chris Hedges explained his view of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and why he’s supporting it.
“I spent 20 years overseas, I’m a war correspondent,” he said. “I came back and realized that corporations have carried out a coup d’état in my country.”
Hedges wrote for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Christian Science Monitor, and was part of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, for a series of articles examining the terrorist attacks on the United States and profiling the al Qaeda network.

“I covered the street demonstrations that brought down Milošević, I’ve covered both of the Palestinian intifadas, and once movements like this start and articulate a fundamental truth about the society that they live in, and expose the repression, the mendacity, the corruption and the decay of structures of power, then they have a kind of centrifugal force, you never know where they’re going.”
He went on: “What happens, and it’s true in all of these movements as well, is the foot soldiers of the elite, the blue uniform police, the mechanisms of control, finally don’t want to impede the movement. At that point, the power elite is left defenseless. So, where’s it going? No one knows. Even the people most intimately involved in the organization don’t know. All of these movements take on a kind of life and color that in some ways is finally mysterious. The only thing I can say, having been in the middle of similar movements, is that this one is real … And this one could take ‘em all down.”
Hedges went on to say that large segments of the blue uniform police largely agree with the 99 Percent movement, and that many other police are frustrated because protesters aren’t breaking windows, which they “know how to handle.” He added that the protesters’ “non-hierarchical structure” for decision making is “brilliant,” and suggested that he had nothing he could possibly teach them.
Finally, addressing an individual standing off-camera, Hedges concluded: “For me, I got kids. It’s not about me anymore. It’s about my childrens’ generation. I think my passion for what you are doing — I would even use the word love — comes from the fact that I look as you as fighting on behalf of my little three-year-old, and when I … On Friday morning, of course I was up to find out what happened … And I did what I do now, which is to start crying. God bless you all.”

This video was published to YouTube on Monday, Oct. 17, 2011.

The Everest of Amateur Sailing ?!?

A friend of mine has lost his freakin' mind and is now trying to drag me into it.

Seriously though, what he's setting out to do IS for a good cause and looks like one hell of an adventure so I'm gong to chip in.

Have a look for yourself and see if it's something you can get behind, if only for a few bucks. I mean just the thought of him freezing cold in some open boat is worth the cost of admission!

Washing Machine Orgasm ?

The Smoking Lounge Ceiling

Dali Llama - One of my heroes

Nuff Said.....

Slow the F*@K Down

Someone shared this with me today and I thought I'd pass it along.