Sparticus

I'm getting really tired of privacy issues on the internet. Being in a position where I may one day be working with minors I hear a great deal of conflicting instructions, but the one I am going to talk about is the issue of being somebody.

We talk a lot in the Education Department about being a person, being relatable, being careful, being conservative, being experimental, being professional, being ourselves, and so on. So, where does that put me? Am I supposed to be careful of every little thing that I post on the internet? I haven't got any posts of illegal drug use, pornography, hate crimes (at least I don't think my "People I Hate" segments are considered hate crimes) or illegal activity (someone took down the picture of us walking left out of a parking lot that had a Right Turn Only sign), so what's the big deal? Sure, I drink and I swear and I make the occasional wild accusation, but the people that don't do that kind of stuff are the people who hide the fact that they do. So, should I join the conservatives and the cowards and try and erase my existence on the internet? I have two problems with that.
1) I'm not that good at the internet. It'd be like trying to clean up an oil spill with my bare hands.
2) Fuck that!
Why should I spend the time and effort to make myself digitally invisible? Why should the only information be an e-portfolio? Should I make all of my friends and colleagues sign confidentiality agreements before I act like myself? If we're going to let our potential employers dictate how we act, then we let them dictate who we are. And if we all tried to present ourselves as hard working, innovative, creative, involved cardboard cutouts, then future employers will just have to dig deeper to find out who you really are.

Many of you may already know my opinions on public and even private surveillance, but for those of you who don't, here's the truth: we all do things we wouldn't want other people to see. We all do things that we think separate us from everyone else. But, when everyone is doing something wrong, who's to say that it is wrong? If we were all seen as ourselves, then all the 'unacceptable' things that we do would be entirely normal.

So wouldn't it be great if we all let ourselves be who we are? What are our future employers going to do? Not hire anyone? The problem is, "I am Sparticus" doesn't work in this case when some people don't participate. Those people are fake. But maybe that's what you have to do to play the game.

Big Brother Needs To Get To Work

I'm sick of this shit, guys. People can trace my IP, copy my debit card, and find my name, address, and phone number all without any trouble. The police have me on record for my heinous exiting my old high school after lunch break. The system has a credit history on me a mile long (that's the system, not just the bank). I have folders in different medical facilities that contain my medical history and information. But despite all this, Alberta Education doesn't have my grades.

I've got an Alberta Education number! I've taken my tests and I was assured that they were taken to our provincial capital for review. I attended a university inside the province. On top of that, I sent all of my information to Mount Royal the first time I applied! So here is my question:
Why is it so goddamn hard for post-secondary institutions to just look up all my information their goddamn selves?

My argument can be broken down into three simple arguments:

1. My information exists somewhere. Just link it all to my Alberta Education number. I can get all my transcripts sent anywhere I want from that anyway (it just costs me money)
2. Everyone else has me on file in some way. Safeway keeps track of how many bags of corn chips I eat per week, and the government can't keep track of sum of my educational achievement expressed simply as single page of grades?
3. a) How can an accredited institution such as MRU or UofC not be trusted with access to view my grades, and b) even if they can't be trusted, what malicious acts could they commit with knowing numbers of things that I did once? What? Are they going to feloniously report my aptitude?
4. (Bonus argument) They don't even accept a transcript that I give them! They need to get the information directly from my previous post-secondary institution- correction: They need to get me to get them the information directly from my previous post-secondary institution.

In conclusion, I'm sick of educational institutions that clearly recognize each other who refuse to communicate with each other independently. It's as if they make all the hoop jumping mandatory to prove that you're devoted to going to school. As if the application fees aren't enough to prove we're serious, we've also done post-secondary before and aren't shitheads fresh out of high school, but we're still harassed the most.

Thanks for making my continued education easier, Alberta. I'll be sure to try to find work in BC.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

I'm tired of people ragging on Canada and the Olympic organizers for everything that goes wrong. "Their opening ceremony hydraulics didn't work and that one arm didn't go up!" Guess what? It's fucking Canada. It's cold. Things break. It worked a hundred times before when they were testing it, but on that night it didn't work. Grow up and move on.

"They should have moved the pillars!"
"They should have put in a wall!"
"They shouldn't make the luge track so fast!"
"They shouldn't even have pillars!"
"They should just make a track that you can't get hurt on!"

Shut the fuck up. Seriously. An athlete died. You don't know him. You never even knew his fucking name before he died. Hell you, wouldn't know his name if he hadn't died. He could have won the Gold Medal and you wouldn't remember his name two weeks after the event. It's hard, but that's the fucking truth.

I'm not saying it isn't sad; it is sad. I'm saying that all these people are picking their battles and they're picking the wrong ones. People die in accidents all the time. People die in war even more. And still even more people die from preventable diseases when they have no access to treatment. So who is the bad guy? The Vancouver Olympic construction and engineering team for their malicious use of pillars, or you for not giving a shit about thousands of lives you could save if you bought your purse at Sears instead of Loius Vuitton and donated the difference to a worthy cause.

Self-righteous? You betcha. But I'm not the one pointing the finger of blame when it comes to an accident.

Yes, it's sad that he died. If it had been some kid who thought he was the shit and died sledding down a hill and hit a lightpost, we would laugh and say that he got what was coming to him. The difference is that we told him to do it. We dared him. We egged him on. Maybe we're the ones responsible for his death and that's such a bitter pill to swallow that we keep looking for someone to blame.

Bad Arguments

Give give it a little bit of thought.
Now, I'm no scientist, but I did complete high school. Isn't methane flammable? And for that matter, isn't butane? I mean, that's what makes it so good for lighting on fire.

See if you can follow this reaction.
CH4 (methane) + 2 O2 -> 2 H20 + CO2 + energy
Or, hell, this one:
2 C4H10 (butane) + 13 O2 -> 10 H2O + 8 CO2 + energy
We can even go crazy and say,
2 CH3OH (methanol) + 3 O2 -> 4 H2O + 2 CO2 + energy

It seems to me that we exhale CO2, so we breathe it in naturally from our atmosphere. And inhaling water vapour never really hurt anyone. Seems to me you put three incredibly clean burning fuels on your list. Bad argument.

After all, we're not afraid of inhaling the fumes from our lighter, sewer gas (you inhale methane when you're in the shitter, get over yourself), or from a candle! How dumb do you have to be to not understand that when you burn a candle, the stearic acid they claim is in it burns into the atmosphere you breathe!

It seems to me that cigarettes are most dangerous when eaten. I know these people aren't smokers, but ignition is a vital part of the smoking process.

And finally, if you think all those "chemicals" are bad for you, you're not quite getting it. Chemicals aren't bad. Everything is made of chemicals (acetic acid is vinegar. You put it on your fries). Some chemicals are in other weird shit, but if that puts you off smoking, check this out.

I'm not pro-smoking, or anti-smoking. Do what you want. If it's not affecting other people, whose business is it? And if you want to talk about the smell, let me know and I'll prepare a lecture on perfumes.

Layout Problems

Why is "Add to Dictionary" the option right by the suggested spelling when you misspell something?

Now "percipitate" is my my dictionary as the most common misspelling of "precipitate" and I don't know how to purge my dictionary of accidentally misspelled words.

I'll be just another asshole who doesn't bother to spellcheck his shit.

David Hume Can Suck, comma, a Dick.

It has come to my attention that the creators of Malcolm in the Middle have based one of their characters on one of the most noteworthy philosophers of the last half millennium.Though one might not see the obvious resemblance of David Hume in the popular sit-com character Stevie, it is clear that the dialogue of the character was modelled after Hume's own work.

Here's an example:

Hence we may discover the reason, why no philosopher, who is rational and modest, has pretended to assign the ultimate cause of any natural operation, or to show distinctly the action of that power, which produces any single effect in the universe. It is confessed, that the utmost effort of human reason is, to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general cases, by means of reasoning from analogy, experience, and observation.

That has twice as many commas as necessary. They don't even make sense! It's like he puts in a comma to breathe.

Skip to 3:50 to hear how I read Hume in my head.

Marvel Decent Alliance 2 2: The Return of Marvel Decent Alliance 2

SPOILER!

It was Ultimate Alliance 1.


God, I'm an idiot sometimes.

Time Makes Fools Of Us All

I wish I had some evidence to back this up, but I couldn't risk it.

We all know what happens to eggs when they get old. They go off. Well, what happens when you let an egg go off for an eighth of a century?

That's right, twelve and a half years.

Okay, that's an estimate because truthfully, I don't know how old it was. How did it not stink horrifically and decay over the years? A protective layer of decorative glue and tissue papers; the kind that would be applied by a young child at Easter.

Yep, that was me, from an Easter many years past. I discovered it while going through old things recently. So what happened to it? The inside rattled, as if it contained a ball. The yolk, but with nothing left surrounding it.

But what the hell was I going to do with that? So I threw it away; and some more junk too. One item hit the egg and cracked it.

Oh Christ, the smell.

So I tied off the trash and chucked it. But what I did see was a charred black ball splitting to expose the chalky yellow yoke that once was.

Part of me wants to redo the experiment.

Hats

I wanted to get a picture for you, but I took a picture of the girl by the ghost stairs instead. Then the guys actually accused me of taking a picture of them. Them, whom this post is about, were sterling examples of how and how not to wear a hat.

The man closest to me chose to wear the hat on his head in the traditional manner. The man to his right chose to wear the hat 4 inches above his head in what may be an 'I don't care what you think' fashion which, in my opinion, conveys strong the message of 'I'm a twat.'

Once I figure out how to send myself pictures (and if it is covered in my contract*) I will upload the ghost stairs picture.


*When attempting to send picture my phone asks me to register. The message is as follows:

If your account is unused for 30 days, Bell Mobility may delete images stored using this service. By sending this message you agree to the

• Accept
• Decline

Agree to the.... agree to the.... Maybe I'll hold off on sending pictures.

Pro-Meat is Pro-Life

I don't think animal rights activists really get it sometimes. Like any good cause, there are some people that take it too far. I think that people that want to have humanity abandon their meat-eating ways don't quite understand what they're asking.

Most livestock isn't bred for its resilience in the natural world. Cows specifically have a difficult time not being eaten, whether it be by people or by wild animals. It is, in fact, people that keep cows alive by protecting them from the real world. Sure, it's just so we can murder them later, but at least they get to live their lives. Cows would soon become extinct if they were abandoned as livestock because they no longer fit into the outside eco-system.

Yes, cows were at one point capable of surviving the wild. But so were people. People wouldn't last a week in the wild without technology. What about those survival guys on the Discovery Channel, you ask? One word: Gortex. Just because they don't have an SUV doesn't mean they are separate from technology. Man would die without shelter, clothing and weapons. Cows would die without fences.

Things do, however, need to change. Just because the purpose of breeding cows is to eat doesn't mean that they should suffer in feed lots. At least try and simulate a naturally safe world. This is what we should be striving for. As for all of you hardcore "meat is murder" people, just be thankful that we don't domesticate more animals to eat. We totally could.

The Asshole

It's been a long time since I've felt like beating the shit out of someone. So long, in fact, that I can't- oh, James. Okay, other than- oh, what, Peter. Right, so I tend to want to beat the shit out of guys who try to (and sometimes successfully) steal my girlfriend.

But last night was different. Last night there was just a guy who needed to be put down. So we're at the bar playing a round of pool and there was this cocky, loud, obnoxious, drunk-off-his-ass dickfaucet (sub-note, when in doubt, dick-noun is a safe and often hilarious insult). Now, I suppose everything does swing around and be about women because he would be a harmless asshole if it wasn't for the girl he was hitting on that was painfully pretty and half his age.

Now, I wish I could say that I did something. In a perfect world, I would fight fire with fire and step in to counter-flirt to which she would instantly recognise my desire to help and divert her attention to me, thus thwarting the advances of creepy old drunk guy and then she would volunteer her number and we could live happily ever after. Plus, I'd be something impractically cool like a jet-fighter pilot as well as a selfless vetrenarian saving kittens in Third World countries. I would obviously be a smart investor and, thus, loaded.

None of that is going to happen. I'm not keen enough for investments, caring enough to care about kittens in Third World countries, well-sighted enough to be a fighter pilot, or suave enough to counter-flirt. I do not have fire to fight fire with. I have water that sticks to familiar rivers.

Anyway, it's not a huge deal. I spent half the night trying to determine if it whether or not she was his unfortunate girlfriend or not (he didn't look twice her age. I only found that out later). Besides, who is actually going to trust that I'd step in to get rid of the asshole. In her mind, it would be, "Great, now there's two assholes." So, what can you do? The only two solutions are 1)beat the living shit out of him, or 2)do nothing. All I needed was a good external excuse...

Oh, I forgot to mention the racism! We were also out with a guy whom I think was Middle Eastern and he and the asshole were playing pool. The guy heads to the bathroom while the asshole - who thought he was the absolute shit at pool - butchered another shot with that terrible bounce-on-one-foot-while-looking-down-your-nose followthrough. Then he asks, "Where is that African?"

Had that not been only halfway through the night, and had I not been the painfully white guy that I am, that would have been my external excuse to take that mother-fucker outside. I don't even care if the guy we were with was African. You've got to know someone pretty fucking well before "that African" becomes an acceptable description.

Sorry

But what the fuck is wrong with you?