Ahh! Now I Get It .. Not really

Been Busy

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's been a very busy week and my one and only client has been keeping hopping. Not a whole lot new to report. The cat is still fat and still does her best to stay that way. Just check her out through the week on the webcam. It really is a streaming web cam and if you wait long enough you will see her stretch or get up for a drink or a dump. Honest.
Listening to CBC on the way to Ingersoll this week they did a piece on Anita Renfroe. She's the lady who has scored millions of YouTube hits for her Mom Song performed to the William Tell Overature. Well, it had been quite some time since I heard it and it still makes me laugh out loud. Honestly with the very few technological references (texting and iPods), my own mother actually used every single one of these lines back in the 1950's.
Enjoy:

Lovin' Life in Yellowknife

Our friend Jerry has finally settled in, has a solid internet provider and has fired up a blog. Visit it and send him a note. http://lovinlifeinyellowknife.blogspot.com/

What Olympic Sport are You ?

According to the undoubtedly scientific quiz:
I am Fencing:
You're competitive but not brutally so. You compete to make yourself better.
You find having an opponent to be challenging and rewarding.
You are fierce when you're in a competition, but you don't wish your rivals any real harm.

Rodney Carrington - A Man for all Seasons

Chatting with Jerry up there in the territories today and he was asking if I had any Rodney Carrington mp3s I could send to him. Well, try as we may his internet service is very glitchy so I thought I'd try creating a direct link to some of the songs.

If you've never heard Rodney Carrington you just may get a kick out of this. .

Click on the image to check out his website too.

Here's the PlayList:

The day my wife met my girlfriend

Things that piss me off

Dear Penis

MC Stevie Hawking Check It

You may remember CERN the world's largest particle physics lab in Geneva that was eluded to in Dan Brown's prequel to the DaVinci Code "Angels and Demons". In the novel he had the particle physics lab creating small amounts of anti-matter with possibly dire results. Well, CERN is 28 days from startup and are the physics nerds concerned with the possibility of destroying the galaxy? No they aren't and to explain exactly what it is they are up to, they've put together a rap video. Yep nerds doin' rap. Whoda thunk? The MC sounds a lot like Steven Hawkings meets Homer Simpson. As they say in the video, Check It!

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

1-2-3-4

Who doesn't love the Muppets? Oh yes and Feist is pretty good too.

I'm coming Out of the Closet

It's time for me to come out of the closet. After nearly 6 decades I need to admit something to all of my friends, co-workers and acquaintances. It's a difficult thing to say, a guilty pleasure I've enjoyed for many years. It started as a curiosity on my part. I first found it titillating and somehow rather exciting and then one day threw myself fully into it.
Let me explain. My parents were good Church of England folk and properly led me through the rituals. I was baptized in the Anglican church, eventually confirmed. I can recite the apostles creed and of course the Lords prayer by heart. I even know the catechism.
Sorry, you thought I was confessing some nonconformist sexual inclination. Oh no, sorry, that truly is none of anyone's business. No, I'm confessing to be a thinking intelligent human being.
I AM AN ATHEIST.
I can't tell you the exact date the conversion occurred. It's not that simple. Richard Dawkins who in my opinion is one of the greatest thinkers in such subjects describes atheism as a continuum. You can't be an atheist without admitting the "possibility" of the existence of a supreme being. It's a non-provable hypothesis. Is it possible there may be a creator of the universe? Of course that's possible. It's possible because it's impossible to prove a negative.
Biology and Darwin on the other hand elegantly "prove" that such an entity is not required to explain the diverse nature of the world as we know it.
Followers of fundamentalist religions however feel it necessary or convenient to solve all equations by substituting X the unknown with a mysterious God. Why?
That is the question that I've come to grips with. The answer is simple, there is no reason to accept X as unknown and arbitrarily solve the equation by stating therefore:X=GOD. No, unacceptable. By eliminating the work and substituting GOD we stop short scientific progress and all improvement in the human condition.
I truly believe if the human race survives and evolves far enough we may indeed solve for X and if not we will improve the human condition in the effort.
If we stop at the King James Version of the bible we must all still believe the world to be flat, the sun orbiting the earth. Scientific advances in medicine, energy creation, engineering science will have left us in that era. Instead, due to the obstinance of great minds like Galileo and Copernicus we know the planets orbit the Sun and from there all astronomy grew.
When Newton was asked "how did you ever come to the pure mathematical laws of gravity" his answer was " If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." and he was referring to Galileo, Copernicus et al.
Belief in a personal God inhibits science and progress. Today fundamentalist Christians in the United States are holding back scientific research in the areas of stem cell research, aids research and most importantly general genetic research in the name of an arbitrarily selected series of ancient scrolls, interpreted in dubious ways, attributed to be accurate by King James and stated to be "the word of God". Bear in mind the entire screed hinges on the stated fact the world was created in it's entirety 6,000 years ago.
My bottom line. This is an absolutely amazing universe. The earth is a spectacular place to be. I'm thrilled that I live. I care about my fellow creatures. I need no reward other than this life. I need no other love than the love of my fellow creatures.
With credit to "The Actors Studio" and in answer to the final question in the Proust Questionnaire: "If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?" my answer would have to be "you're from where? Oh sorry, forgot about that place. How's it doin'?"
My Name is Brian and I AM AN ATHEIST.

Wick's flame fading fast

The London Free Press reports the end of an era. "The Wick, as it's sometimes called, has been a downtown fixture since it was built in 1855, its rooms steeped in history if not grace.
Now, the owner has applied for a city demolition permit, a request staff are backing. "
Kind of sad actually but likely overdue. I was in there about a year ago and I gotta tell you, it's not what it used to be.
"With its wooden beams warping, its upper floors condemned and much of its original material unusable, heritage activist Joe O'Neil said he won't oppose the owner's bid to demolish it. "
You know it's bad when the heritage dudes won't even step in to save it.

Paris Hilton for President

Just in case you haven't already seen this thanks to Countdown with Keith Olbermann :

Meebo ~ Facebook ~ Good Ideas but not for me

My personal website BrianSwann.COM attracts a little bit of attention due to the streaming webcam. Folks seem to like watching a cat sleep I guess.
The camera webpage until today also included a chat widget from Meebo. I'm afraid that became a little problematic. Meebo is a very useful little gadget but requires work. You need to be logged on your Meebo account and listen for alerts otherwise people who'd like to chat with you feel you're just never there.
In the beginning I used Meebo as a customer support tool on one of my client websites and it worked very well. It allows you to create a closed group of chat clients without disclosing any personal information. For a personal website however, not so good.
The people I want to chat with, my friends and colleagues all have my MSN Messenger account and I'm almost always logged in to messenger. That's the place to reach me.
A further catharsis took place today when I officially discontinued my Facebook account. Facebook is probably a really good idea for chatty sociable in your face oooh! listen to the gossip kind of people but it's just not for me. I find it incredibly complex to use with all of its gadgets and widgets and addins, intrusive as hell when you have incessant posters in your friends list and an extremely poor substitute for simple email.
I'm also not comfortable with the world knowing my personal business. So many folks don't understand by posting on your wall you may as well go outside and spray paint on your house.
So to all of my personal friends and colleagues, chat with me on MSN. If you want to know what's going on in the cobweb infested dusty and cluttered attic I like to refer to as my brain, come here once in a while.
For anyone in the whole web world, feel free to email me. You remember how to do that right?

Batshit Xians Foiled by No-Nonsense Canadians

The Winnipeg Sun reports the whacko fundies from Westboro church apparently arrived in Manitoba but didn't get a chance to harass the family of Tim McLean. In case you aren't aware Tim McLean was a young man who lost his life to a mad man on a bus. He was murdered and his corpse subjected to gross indecencies. "The fundamentalist Westboro church, deemed a hate group by some U.S. organizations because of its raucous rallies to promote its stance against homosexuality, had announced a plan to picket at the funeral. The church had earlier claimed that McLean's grisly slaying was God's punishment of Canada for its liberal laws and policies."
In response "hundreds of Winnipeg residents who lined a Westwood street in hopes of keeping a zealous U.S. religious group from rallying outside the funeral"
Now here's my take on this. It may be true the majority of Christians would never agree with these incredible nut cases but in the U.S. they condone it under a provision in their hallowed Constitution. The 1st. amendment in it's "free exercise" clause allows this type of behavior below the border. The framers of U.S. constitution I'm sure had no intention of condoning such an interpretation any more than they expected the right to bear arms (by a well regulated militia) would be construed as the right for folks like Charleton Heston to construct a gun vault containing everything from muskets to rocket launchers.
Why does this bother me? Well, polls indicate the majority of good amurcans truly believe these are their rights the earth is 6,000 years old, the end is nigh and the One God is on their side and they WILL impose that on the rest of the world.
Think whatever you like but please I beg you, keep your asinine opinions to yourself.

The WebCam is Back

It took a bit of work but I finally sorted out the problems I was having with my streaming webcam. It seems to be working again so feel free to take a look. For the most part it's pretty boring but, a few hardcore cat lovers seem to tune in on a regular basis to see how Suzie is doing.

Iced Coffee anyone ?

Apparently it's official. Jerry Sweet has moved to Yellowknife Northwest Territories. He hopes to eventually open a coffee shop and he's looking for help naming it. For now though, Jerry is working on dyi projects in his new home. You know painting, dry wall. Insulation no doubt and perhaps roof repairs.
Jerry reports the night he arrived (only night according to the clock by the way since he says the sun thought about setting then changed it's mind), anyhow, that first night the cat was keeping him awake so he let it out. Guess it hasn't come home yet. Jerry feels it may have run off with or perhaps is now contained in some of the local wildlife.

But the good news is, they have a spare. Far more frightening than the fauna, impending cold and 24 hour darkness in my opinion is the fact 24 cans of Kokanee beer cost $52.00. Sheesh. Due to the permafrost, the high speed internet pipe freezes up on occasion so contact is a little difficult but feel free to drop him a note at: jerry@jerrysweet.com.

The Genius of Charles Darwin

Richard Dawkins whose recent book "The God Delusion" has rocked the religious right has produced another brilliant documentary. If you aren't familiar with his work you should visit his website. Dawkins is one of the greatest proponents of Darwin, a professor of biology, holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, a brilliant author, orator and documentary producer. The BBC is currently airing a three part series entitled "The Genius of Charles Darwin". Sadly there's little hope we'll see it here in North America since our media content is controlled by the theocracy to the south. Thanks however to YouTube you can view Part 1 of the series on-line.
Expect a great deal more postings in this blog related to science vs religion.

I'm thinking of resurrecting my blog. It's been a long time since I made an entry and this is actually just a test to see whether I remember how. My live webcamera is back on line, check it out at Click Here.