TriumphAnt

MEMORANDUM
FROM: Me
TO: TV news shows
SUBJECT: “Newer is not always better”

More and more TV news shows seem to be getting caught up in the technology of transmitting “live” by cellphone in an effort to show us, the viewers, that they’re right on top of the story. However, the one common element I have seen in all these remote stories is that the technology seems to be on a par with the images that the Apollo 11 camera and microphone transmitted from the surface of the moon in July 1969.

“Skype” is the name that most often follows the word, “Via” in such reports and, in a public-service effort to find out more about it for the countless (well, “countless” as applied to people whose numeracy ends when they run out of fingers) readers of this sporadic ramble, here’s how it is summed up on Wikipedia, which at least avoids trying to sell me the application:

“Skype ([skaɪp]) is a software application that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing. Skype was written by Estonia-based developers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, who had also originally developed Kazaa. The Skype Group, founded by Swedish-born entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, has its headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose.”

Well, that explains it, because nothing says “quality software” like “Estonia-based developers”.

Isn’t Estonia one of those places where spammers register their file servers to avoid being charged under North American law?... [GoogleGoogleGoogle... yep]

“With countries like Estonia, Russia, and Romania doing little or nothing to track down and prosecute cybercriminals, they will continue to set up shop there.” (From www.allspammedup.com / May 8, 2009)

As news networks link to reporters transmitting from such faraway and difficult-to-reach exotic locations as, oh for example Mexico City (during the height of the swine flu scare), the best onscreen image they can manage is grainy and just enough out of synch with the sender’s voice to be really, really irritating. Add to this the fact that cellphone lenses are invariably wide-angle, which usually gives the remote reporter hilariously exaggerated features at the middle of his / her face, suggesting that this is not so much a news report as it is a failed audition for “The Blair Witch Project”.

It all leaves me wondering why the news shows don’t dispense with the live Skype-and-its-clones feeds entirely and simply do what they used to do not so very long ago – put a still photo of the reporter onscreen while airing the audio of the telephone conversation that the news host is having with the distantly located reporter.* If anything, that says “immediate” even more than the ridiculous, jerky, Skype-transmitted cellphone images.

* Alternatively, there’s always “The Daily Show”’s perfectly functional, albeit satirical, approach. Whenever they cut away to a special correspondent – their “Senior Child Molestation Expert”, to take just one example – they simply switch to a different camera in the studio that is framing their “remote” reporter in front of a bluescreen on which they insert a screen-captured background image of whatever the heck they agree looks vaguely like the location from which the stand-up report is supposed to be coming. Meanwhile, the “remote” reporter is standing about 20 feet away from anchor Jon Stewart at his desk. Much hilarity abounds.

= = =

When is a park not a park?

When it’s the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Park.

Not so long ago in our neighbourhood, this was officially opened.

(Photo: The Epoch Times) And I have a great deal of difficulty understanding exactly what it is all about. From the very first page on its website, for example, you’re presented with this rather bizarre summation:

“Located on 4.5 acres at the busy intersections of Alta Vista Dr., Industrial Ave., and Riverside Dr., Ottawa’s Cancer Survivors Park is the second of its kind in Canada and will offer a place of serenity and inspiration to cancer patients and survivors, their friends and families.”

Is it just a quirk of my thinking, or does anyone else reading that sentence wonder how a “place of serenity” is to be found at the “busy intersections” of three of Ottawa’s most heavily-travelled streets? Because at 5:00 pm when the homebound weekday rush is in full swing, “serenity” is just about the last description you think of applying to the whirl of vehicles navigating those intersections.

Meanwhile, the “park” is a multi-million dollar conglomeration of steel and stone that, for me, recalls the Korean War Memorial on Washington DC’s Mall, minus the ghostly sculptured soldiers walking among the paths of stone and highly polished granite. (Photo: z.about.com)


There is, in other words, precious little about it that is “park”-like – you know: trees, grass, flowers, and so on. In fact, as that website front page shows, its only “flowers” are two-storey tall hideous artificial constructs in colours seemingly selected from the discount stocks offered at an end-of-season Wal-Mart paint sale priced so as to clear the shelves for their incoming array of plastic outdoor nativity scenes. (Photo: The Epoch Times)


(Those flowers, incidentally, come with a tale of their own. Allegedly, they were all supposed to be yellow – daffodils, in fact. Then, being as how we’re in Ottawa, our inherent politicization of everything drew the Canadian Cancer Society into the fray with a demand that the Blochs eliminate any overt “daffodilism” in their park because the CCS hangs its own annual springtime fundraising campaign on sales of live, potted versions of precisely that flower. One wonders if they got an early look at the Blochs’ monstrosity and reasoned that any confusion at all with it in the public’s mind – and wallets – would not help their cause at all, indeed might well work against it.)

The Blochs’ park is also filled with several large stone blocks resembling sarcophagi, each of which is decorated with a couple of greyish-looking artificial oak leaves that look like petrified bat turds, and a bronze plaque on which is cast an inspirational saying, or a bit of factual information about the disease that is cancer. (Photo: ATV.ca) Frankly, were I a cancer survivor, or the relative of a family member lost to the disease, I would be hard pressed to imagine another place short of a funeral home that is more depressing than this “park” festooned with so many symbols and structures resonant of death.

Had I successfully grappled with cancer, I think I would much prefer a genuine, natural place of serenity like, oh, you know, perhaps a... park, there to celebrate the beauty of the natural world and my place in it, instead of parking my butt on an ice-cold steel bench overlooked by claw-like semi-arches on which sculptured steel tendrils of ivy have been woven, frozen into immobility, hope-absent and about as welcoming as one of those other “parks” – the ones with stripes painted on their flat surfaces to help drivers position their cars with a minimum of fuss and disorder.

But maybe that’s just me.

= = =

Irony of the month.

I have the feeling this little bit of whimsy was created by a line-up editor with a sense of humour, but recently on msn.ca’s online news page, this story: “Drop parental opt-out on evolution, other issues, teachers urge Alberta. Alberta's teachers have officially asked the province to drop amendments to its human rights legislation that would give parents the right to pull their children out of classes discussing religion, evolution, sexuality or sexual orientation.”

appeared right beside this one:

“47-million-year-old primate fossil unveiled. Scientists on Tuesday unveiled fossilized remains of one of the oldest and most complete skeletons of an early primate, a finding they say could further our understanding of what our own ancestors might have looked like.”

which ought nicely to tie those parents seeking to pull their kids out of those ungodly evolution classes into wild new pretzel shapes.

= = =

Sleep tight tonight; your government is “simplifying”.

For your amusement (hat tip to IK), here – verbatim – are the instructions that appear on p.1 of a Government of Canada website which purports to allow federal employees to “access your CompensationWeb Applications (CWA)” The “amusement” comes when you read on – and on – after the first four words:

"Follow these simple steps...

"1. PREPARE
Collect the following information before you enrol.
Pension Number (Superannuation Number) – found on your Pension and Benefits Statement *
Total Deductions – found on your most recent pay stub
Personal Record Identifier (PRI) – found on your pay stub
Government E-mail Address
Date of Birth (yyyy | mm | dd)

"2. CREATE A PROFILE
Go to: [Public Works and Government Services Canada / PWGSC website]
remuneration-compensation
Select the English or Français button.
Select the New Users button.
Scroll down and select Pay Applications or
Pension Applications.
Choose and Record
User Name
Password
Recovery Secret
Check the box I agree to Terms and Conditions of use.
Select the Submit button.
Record Identifier.
..........................................
Do not close the browser.

"3. ENROL
Select Click here to log in.
Type your User Name and Password.
Select the Log in button.
Select the Continue button for the next 2 pages.
Type your Pension Number (Superannuation Number).*
Type your Total Deductions.
Type your PRI.
Type your Government e-mail address.
Type your Date of Birth.
Select the Enrol button.
You will receive an e-mail with an attachment and a link.
Open the attachment.
Copy the Enrolment Activation Number (EAN).
Open the link.
Paste the EAN in the field.
Select the Continue button.
The System returns to the Home Page of the tool you selected.
* Not applicable for non–pension plan
members."

= = =

What in heaven’s name would we ever do without organizations like this that are willing to spend their own money to fund such outstanding and impartial research? File this under “What are the odds?”:

"Study commissioned by plastics industry says reusable grocery bags dangerous
CANADIAN PRESS (May 24)
TORONTO - The growing popularity of reusable grocery bags could pose a health risk to Canadians by increasing their exposure to dangerous bacteria, says a study commissioned by the plastics industry released Wednesday.
The Canadian Plastics Industry Association hired two independent labs to conduct what it said was the first study of so-called eco-friendly grocery bags in North America, and found 64 per cent of them were contaminated with some level of bacteria…"

Not to be outdone in publishing its own findings, the World Wildlife Fund is cited in the same article:

“The World Wildlife Fund, which worked with grocery chains such as Loblaws to convince retailers to charge five cents for each plastic bag to discourage their use, said the concerns raised in the study could be addressed by washing the reusable bags.”

Up next: a study commissioned by the same Canadian Plastics Industry Association finds that shredded plastic bags are better than bran for really cleaning out the ol’ colon.

And what does it all call to mind? (You Tube link)

= = =

And finally, why is the international community so upset about North Korea testing a nuclear bomb by setting it off deep underground within its own borders? I think the international community should be doing exactly the opposite by doing everything it can to encourage them to test every last one of their nuclear bombs by detonating them underground within their own borders – just to be sure they all work. And if they build another one? Test it... you don’t want to find out you’ve got a dud just when you need it most.

PS... Watching news coverage of this story leads me to wonder why it is that all the military “bad guys” of the world seem to require the goose step from their soldiers on parade. It’s a hopelessly bizarre march cadence that’s got to be incredibly hard on boot heels, not to mention human thigh muscles. North Korea’s troops include entire regiments of women and if you thought the goose step looks stupid when guys do it...

Until la prochaine...