Online Word Processing and Spreadsheets

If you're looking for an online version of [something like] Microsoft Word and Excel then go here. These are products of Google but do closely resemble their MS equivalents. Very neat stuff!

42 Minutes of Realism

Here's a clip from C-SPAN's Washington Journal program featuring my favourite writer, Mark Steyn. You'll need RealPlayer installed to see it. Very, very interesting!

New Photos from Vancouver

I went grocery shopping at Granville Island the other day and took some photos along the way. Here are a few of them:

Chapters Ban of 'America Alone'?

Mark Steyn's book is a clear bestseller. Yet it seems apparent that the book is not available on the shelves of any Chapters in Canada. A bit strange, no?

I just sent Chapters the following e-mail:

Hello,

I just tried purchasing a copy of Mark Steyn's book, "America Alone" at my local Chapters store here in Vancouver, BC. It was not available and your associate at the store had no idea when/if any copies would be available. I appreciate that your company may have different political views than Mr. Steyn, but is it really appropriate to ban such a popular book (#2 on Amazon.ca today) from your store shelves?

Sincerely,

Robert Werner



Here's the English portion of the automated response I just received:

Cher client/Chère cliente. Vous trouverez ci-dessous ce message en français.

Thank you for contacting Customer Service at Chapters Indigo Online!

This email confirms that your email has been received and we will respond to it within 24 hours.

Help is also available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via our online helpdesk, located at www.chapters.indigo.ca/help.

We look forward to serving you!

Sincerely,
Customer Service Team
Chapters Indigo Online

I just received the following response. Talk about expending a lot of time & energy and saying absolutely nothing:

If this issue is not resolved to your satisfaction, please feel free to contact us for further assistance.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
Chapters Indigo Online. Books, Music, Movies and More.

(April)

10/23/2006 11:28 AM

Dear Robert Werner, Thank you for contacting Chapters Indigo Online regarding your search for an item in store. We appreciate hearing from our customers and value the information and feedback that we receive. Please accept this e-mail as confirmation that your comments regarding your search for an item in store have been forwarded to our store experience team. We thank you for taking the time to share the thoughts provided within your e-mail and we also invite you to do so again in the future. Thank you for choosing Chapters Indigo Online. Books, Music, Movies and More. Sincerely, April Customer Service Team Chapters Indigo Online

I spoke too soon! Here's a very nice response I received a few minutes later:

Dear Robert Werner,

Thank you for your email to Indigo Books & Music Inc. and your interest in Mark Steyn’s book. Wow, this title is certainly generating interest! You are the second customer to email me this morning about this. I have some good news for you – it’s on its way! Indigo is certainly carrying this title in our larger stores (Indigo and Chapters stores). Some higher volume Coles bookstore locations will also receive this title, but it was not ordered for all of the smaller stores due to space considerations, and expected demand.

The order is already being filled by the publisher, and right now we are just waiting for the actual shipment of the books. I have tried to narrow it down to a more specific shipment date, but unfortunately I was not able to determine this. You do not mention which of our Vancouver stores you prefer to frequent, so I checked all of them. Our Chapters locations at 788 Robson, 2505 Granville in Vancouver and Metrotown Eaton Centre in Burnaby are all slated to receive copies of this title, as well as our Indigo store at 1025 Marine Drive. Would you like me to keep an eye on the inventory at a particular store, and email you when this title arrives at that location?

Of course, the option to order online is always available if you prefer, but if not, we look forward to welcoming you into one of our store locations soon.

Sincerely,

Laura Blight
Coordinator, Selling Services & Solutions
Store Performance Department
Indigo Books and Music Inc.

The Death of Europe, As We Know It?

Canadian author, Mark Steyn, is on a whirlwind media tour promoting his new book, "America Alone". Not since I was a kid did I indicate to anyone what gift I would like, but I've told my mom that I'd love this book for Christmas.

From everything I've read and heard about the book, it paints a pretty bleak picture of the future - especially if you live in Europe. Why? I'll let Steyn explain in his own words: "Yes, it is [a dire future for Europe]. And it’s an interesting…it really is an interesting point to me, because people occasionally say oh, well, you’re just making predictions. You’re just making predictions. No, I’m not. I’m actually dealing with the reality of now. In other words, if there’s only a million Italians born in the year 2006, you can’t have two million Italian 20 year olds in 2026. The most reliable twenty year indicator is the demographic one, because you know exactly who the adults are going to be in 20 years time. They’re the people who are the children now. And Europeans simply are not having children. They’re not having children. And what happens, I think, when you get to a particularly advanced kind of welfare democracy, in which every aspect of life is guaranteed for you by the state, socialized health care, cradle to grave welfare, is that life becomes like a sort of endless, Summer school vacation. And you live in a kind of permanent present tense, in which you’re sort of severed from all the kind of primal impulses of society, including the most basic one, which is having children, and thereby ensuring the future. Because you know, the public pensions liabilities…we talk about social security going bankrupt here…in Greece, the public pensions liabilities by the year 2015 are going to be 28% of GDP. Well, that’s total societal collapse, not a mild accounting problem."

This is big picture stuff, but it's important, critically important. Is it the kind of thing that a text-messaging, ADD-laden, hedonistic youth population wants to listen to? Absolutely not. But they should and so should you. Here is an MP3 file that provides an abridged version of Steyn's thesis. You can PodCast it and listen to it on your iPod!

Finally, here's a Canadian take on this subject by National Post columnist, John Robson.

Free Hugs in Korea

Most touching!

Seeking Revenge on Telemarketers

This has got to be one of the funniest things I have ever heard:

Internet Traffic Monitoring

Ever wondered how popular your favourite Internet site is? You can find out by going to Alexa.com. Some interesting results indeed!

Very Cool Interactive CAD Program

I've never seen anything quite like this. I think it would be a great thing for any Physics class.

Why Your Taxes Never Go DOWN!!!

Here's a photo taken at Broadway & Fir in Vancouver. It shows 2 Translink workers removing flyers from a pole, along with one supervisor. Yes, boys & girls, perish the thought that just one employee could do such work!

There's a joke in here somewhere bug I don't have a good punchline. But here's the start: "How many Translink employees does it take to remove a few flyers?"

Obvious Signs in Vancouver - Part 47

In August, my "sister", Kristi, visited from Chicago. She pointed out that there are an exorbitant number of "obvious" signs throughout this community. I had not noticed this before but now keep an eye out for them. Here's one at Broadway & Granville:

Families in Vancouver and Seattle

Here's a very interesting pair of articles that just appeared in a Seattle newspaper, focusing on family life in the downtown areas of Vancouver and Seattle:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/288843_vancouver16.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/288840_family16.html

Little Romanian Beauty

This wonderful little girl is the daughter of a Romanian family who received a computer from BCDD last Christmas Eve. The whole family is a Canadian immigrant success story. It's so great to see them all doing so well here!

Workspace

A scene I'm all too familiar with . . .

Unifying India & America

Here's a short movie about Indian Call Centres. Hilarious!

The Minds of Men and Women

I recently read a newspaper article that summarized a recent book that examined the workings of the male and female mind. Two interesting tidbits came out:

1. The average woman speaks 20,000 words per day. The average man speaks only 7,000.

2. The average woman thinks about sex once per day. The average man thinks about sex every 58 seconds.

What can we, of the male species, conclude from this? Simple. Find a man's brain inside the body of a beautiful woman!

Sunny Afternoon Photos

Some friends came into town and we went out for brunch at the Granville Island Hotel. Afterwards I took a few photos on what was a blessedly sunny day!

Old Vancouver Postcards

I was recently sorting through some old photos and came across these 4 postcards. I believe they hail from the 1970's or even the 1960's. My oh my has Vancouver changed!!

Lost Lagoon and the northern side of downtown.

The famous Stanley Park train. This actually looks almost the same.

The 9 o'clock gun and Coal Harbour, including 3 of the 4 floating gas stations that I remember.


Here's a view of Kits Beach, with the West End and downtown in the background. I'll have to capture an updated view from this perspective. What's amazing in this photo is that the two tallest buildings are the BC Hydro tower on the far right and the Hotel Vancouver further to its left. They are tiny compared to the buildings that now exist in the city!

Eclectic Signpost at Granville Island

A good friend took me out for a belated b'day lunch at Granville Island. Afterwards we strolled over to The Market and I happened upon this sign. I don' know if it is new or I had just never noticed it before but I love the colourfulness and zaniness of it - it's almost as if it were out a children's picture book!

The New Age Cult of Self Loathing

"Rhetoric" has several definitions but the most common one in use today would fall under this description: "the deliberate abuse of words so as to overexaggerate any realistic semblance of the truth".

In recent times I've found the worst offenders of such language to be what might aptly be described as "left wing lunatics". Such people base most all of their arguments on emotion and little to none on fact. They seriously annoy me because they try to come across as holier-than-thou and thus they feel that anything they say is the only correct course of action and must be followed. If you dare disagree with them then any combination of the following epitaphs are spat out at you: ignorant, stupid, Nazi, neo-con, conservative, . . . .

I've found many of these people to be atheists yet they've clearly found a new religion: the cult of environmentalism or socialism, or whatever "ism" happens to be popular with them that year.

I fully support their right to free speech but absolutely abhor their self-imposed exclusion of free thought. Try to question their convictions and you just get regurgitated talking points that they've clearly heard over & over again from news sources that all drum to the same beat.

Case in point is some of the reaction to Mark Steyn's recent visit to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. You can listen to the full account of it here. Rather than accept as the truth what Steyn and other journalists have observed, some have instead chosen to invent complete fantasies of what they feel must be the case. I'm confident that a poll would reveal a close correlation of such folks with 9-11 conspiracy theorists.

Here's one such example, followed by Steyn's retort:

BUSH IS A NAZI, GITMO IS THERESIENSTADT
On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumours about the exterminations camps. The commission included E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health, and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. Dr Paul Eppstein was instructed by the SS to appear in the role of the mayor of Theresienstadt.

To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazi deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in the some 7,500 were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar, which was written by inmate Hans Krása.

The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Shooting of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron (a director, cabaret performer, and actor who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting most of the cast, and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose, and only segments of it have remained.

Often called The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews, the correct name of the film is: Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement). (Cf. Hans Sode-Madsen: The Perfect Deception. The Danish Jews and Theresienstadt 1940-1945. Leo Baeck Yearbook, 1993)

What a coward you are, Mark Steyn, and a traitor. You will be held accountable for your giggly and chillingly revolting bit of reporting on Gitmo.

You represent so absolutely the utter depravity of this nation and its hideous cult of authoritarianism. God help you in the next life when you will be forced to review your morally black actions here.

Celia Thaxter

MARK: So Gitmo is the new Theresienstadt, eh? Well, that’s an improvement. I thought you lot thought it was the new Auschwitz. But, just as a matter of interest, if Gitmo’s the new Theresienstadt, where exactly is the new Auschwitz? As to who will be forced to review their morality, perhaps one day you’ll sit down and stumble across your letter to me and think about what it is you’ve just done: you’ve compared your own government and your fellow citizens serving in the military to the perpetrators of one of the worst genocides in history. Do you realize just how nutty that is? Rational discussion with you is impossible because if you think Bush is Hitler and Gitmo is Theresienstadt then you have so debased the language that you will have no words left for genuine atrocities. Shame on you and your rotten diseased heart: you mock not just the young men and women I met at Guantanamo doing a thankless job for less pay than you get but the dead and bereaved of 60 years ago, who unlike you understood all too clearly what real horror was. You’ve become unmoored from reality. Good luck trying to grope your way back. I’ve got no further time for you.