April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

General

Smile you’re on Deadbeat Camera

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The Ontario government has decided to post your picture and personal information if you don’t pay up on your child support.

the website will include names, physical descriptions, last known addresses and occupations.

While I am unsympathetic to those who can and simply refuse to pay child support, there can be legitimate reasons why support payments have fallen behind. And we all know that the government is famous for mistakes.

They do apparently rely on the permission of the person owed the money, however, many people involved in these situations are quite adversarial and so might consider the smack at a former spouse before all else.

I think we are becoming far too comfortable with the idea of stealing peoples privacy “for the greater good”.

Cameras everywhere, more and more stringent ID requirements, less privacy and fewer civil rights.

These are easy targets, of course, who doesn’t want parents to fulfil their obligations? But if we do not protect the rights of those who we may feel do not deserve them, we set up easy inroads to take away the rights of those that we feel do.

We may agree that it is easier to prosecute if a crime has been captured on video. But do we agree that all our movements should be recorded?

Where does the line between defence and offence blur?

Microsoft willing to pay for Wikipedia edits

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(AP) — Microsoft Corp. has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.

While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.

“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,” Wales said Tuesday.

Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.

This time it’s personal

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The last few months I’ve been through numerous medical tests, and yesterday I had surgery.

I hear complaints all the time about the state of our health care system but I have to say, although I had to travel out of my community for two of the appointments, all my tests and procedures were booked and over with in record time.

In the course of about two months I had about seven different tests, four different doctors appointments and surgery.

Every effort was made to make it easy for me, including doing my pre-op over the phone. The doctors all communicated well with each other and all I needed was my health card.

One of the gentlemen in the outpatient surgery had a cataract removed. He said it was less hassle than going to the dentist and cost a lot less too.

Our system isn’t perfect of course, but it’s working pretty well despite efforts to destroy it.

Oh and if you’re interested everything went well and I should be fine.

Which is good news or bad depending on how you feel about me. 😉

Blog for Choice Day

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Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade.

While this is predominately a celebration for American women, I believe that women worldwide can share in the celebration.

In the words of Virginia Woolf, “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”

The topic this year is a simple one, “why I am pro-choice.”

I am pro – choice because I believe children have a right to know they were wanted. That they weren’t born because of some imagined obligation to church or to god or because some law ruled their mother had to carry them to term.

I am pro – choice because I do not believe that my daughters have less right to decide their futures than my sons.

The simple answer is I am pro choice because I could not be anything else.

I have written to this subject before here, here,and here
to name a few.

I would say to sum up those posts that abortion is a woman’s right. A human right.

A society which would seek to suppress human rights is neither democratic nor just.

And human rights are not up for discussion or debate, they just inherently are.

technorati tags: Blog for Choice

I always thought the future would be a lot more fun

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Yesterday over on Canada’s Debate I took the “Which science-fiction writer are you?” test.

My result,

John Brunner

His best known works are dystopias — vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid.

So in keeping with that I present the following possible dystopic futures. [Read more…] about I always thought the future would be a lot more fun

Nuance, it’s the new black!

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Nuance used to be a good word

Dictionary meaning:
1. A subtle or slight degree of difference, as in meaning, feeling, or tone; a gradation.
2. Expression or appreciation of subtle shades of meaning, feeling, or tone: a rich artistic performance, full of nuance.

New meaning:
1. Riding the fence with a picket up your ass (see E. May abortion policy)
2.Trying to save corporate face by changing a policy but pretending not to..

example

Royal Bank has changed its U.S. dollar account policy and will now let dual nationality Canadian customers open the accounts as long as they meet standard residency and other requirements.

Canada’s biggest bank issued what it called a clarification of its policies “due to confusion” surrounding the issue.

A brief statement from the bank said it asks for proof of citizenship and residency for any individual client wanting to open a U.S. dollar account.

“With some exceptions, RBC will provide a U.S. dollar account to dual citizens of sanctioned countries as long as they meet our ‘know your client’ and ‘anti-money laundering’ requirements, which include proof of residency in Canada,” the bank said.

An RBC spokesman in Montreal said the bank “just nuanced our position to a certain extent.”

nuance