Canadian justice

Guilty verdicts announced in a Canadian "Honor Killing" trial.

KINGSTON, Ont. — Three members of a Montreal family have been ordered imprisoned for life after a jury found them guilty of murdering four other family members in a what the judge called “cold-blooded, shameful murders” based on a “twisted notion of honour.”

Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder after a jury deliberated for 15 hours.

Hamed appeared to collapse onto the front railing of the prisoner’s box as the verdicts were announced. His father, standing next to him, put his hand on his shoulder and then on top of his head. Yahya appeared to begin crying.

“There is nothing more honourless than the deliberate murder of, in the case of Mohammad Shafia, three of his daughters and his wife … in the case of Tooba Yahya, three of her daughters and a stepmother to all her children, in the case of Hamed Shafia three of sisters and a mother,” Judge Robert Maranger, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said, before he passed sentence.

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour — a notion of honour that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”

An in-depth story and analysis from Christie Blatchford of the National Post is HERE.

Perhaps the verdict will bring this horrific practice more into public view.  It amazes me that modern liberal feminists seem blind to this problem.  I guess it's a feeling of "it can't happen here".  Yet the leaders of the "sisterhood" somehow find it easier to protest for equal pay and similar measures - even when women are dying.  Maybe it's not their kind of  women who are suffering.  In any case, I await NOW to make this issue number one.  I fear that I will be waiting for a long while.

No drilling in ANWR

We don't want to be disturbing the animals in their natural environment.

Did anyone think that it might be providing a form of playground equipment?

Some relatives??

Captured by US Geological Survey remote cameras.  The cameras are motion-sensor activated.


I like getting my back scratched as well.

The homeless man

A man was walking down the street when he was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless man who asked him for a couple of dollars for dinner.

The man took out his wallet, extracted ten dollars and asked, "If I give you this money, will you buy some beer with it instead of dinner?"

"No, I had to stop drinking years ago," the homeless man replied.

"Will you use it to go fishing instead of buying food?" the man asked.

"No, I don't waste time fishing," the homeless man said. "I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive."

"Will you spend this on hunting stuff instead of food?" the man asked.

"Are you NUTS!" replied the homeless man. "I haven't hunted in 20 years!"

"Well," said the man, "I'm not going to give you money. Instead, I'm going to take you home for a shower and a terrific dinner cooked by my wife."

The homeless man was astounded. "Won't your wife be furious with you for doing that? The man replied, "That's okay. It's important for her to see what a man looks like after he has given up drinking, fishing and hunting ."

Politically Incorrect Radio Ad

At least he's honest about his opinions.  This is an ad for a concealed carry gun license course in Texas. Listen the whole way through for the zingers.



From an email.

Just who should be punished?

Once again, Big Brother wants to punish the one who points out the truth.

A ninth grader who snapped a picture of a snoozing substitute teacher with his cell phone camera and posted it on a social network is in hot water with his school district.

The unnamed student, who attends Mustang Mid-High School in Mustang, Okla., was suspended, according to ABC affiliate KOCO. The picture shows a "close-eyed man reclining behind a desk", The Oklahoman reported.

Let's protect the sleeping teacher and punish the kid who documented the truth.  Much like the man arrested for recording his run-in with the TSA at the Albuquerque airport.

From the ABC News/Yahoo blog.

What a difference four years will make

From a Bloomberg story on the SOTU:

Of all the themes and subjects absent from Obama’s speech, however, the most depressing omission was also the most unquantifiable: hope. The word itself appeared just once. Obama as candidate was all about offering hope. Obama as president -- somewhat understandably -- has been more about staving off despair. Double-digit unemployment will do that to a president. 

Guess we won't be seeing those HOPE posters this time around.

Pipeline thoughts

Most all but the Greens would agree.

A motivator for you

Friends

Sometimes, you really need to rely on your friends.



Of course, some may say that the girl with the plaid shorts is just being used by her compatriot.  Those folks see oppression everywhere.  Sometimes, it's just helping out.

I think they will be friends for life.  Early shared experiences mean so much.

Hat tip to I Own the World.

Those kind folks at Costa

Passengers from the Costa Condordia have received settlement offers from Costa.

The owners of the Costa Concordia are offering survivors of the disaster a 30 per cent discount off future cruises as they battle to stave off law suits expected to cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

One British survivor of the disaster, which claimed 12 lives with 20 people still missing, branded the offer as "insulting".

It was disclosed that in an attempt to help survivors the ship's parent company, Carnival, has been telephoning passengers daily asking if they are suffering nightmares or sleepless nights.

But that move also appeared to backfire when a psychologist said such questioning could trigger post traumatic stress rather than relieve it.

And other tidbits including:

An emergency services log showed that the Concordia's captain, Francisco Schettino, abandoned ship more than four hours before the last passenger.

Read the whole article from The Telegraph at THIS LINK.

The joys of dash-cam

Sometimes you need proof that you are being scammed.


She stops, then backs up on the street, finally coming out of the car in indignation. All that's missing is grabbing the neck and crying "Whiplash".

Go back and you'll see that the man walks out of the BMW with a briefcase in hand.  Why, after a traffic incident, do you grab your briefcase?  Maybe he had a tape recorder in there....or legal forms....or whatever.

I love how the driver of the rear car points to the dash-cam, and how the perps slink away.  With any luck, the cops traced the license plate and nailed them.

Changes in Higher Education

For your consideration - a long, but thoughtful piece on the coming revolution in higher education from National Affairs. It starts with:

In recent decades, key sectors of the American economy have experienced huge and disruptive transformations — shifts that have ultimately yielded beneficial changes to the way producers and customers do business together. From the deregulation that brought about the end of AT&T's "Ma Bell" system, to the way entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs forever changed the computer world once dominated by IBM, to the way the internet and bloggers have upended the business model of traditional newspapers, we have seen industries completely remade — often in wholly unexpected ways. In hindsight, such transformations seem to have been inevitable; at the time, however, most leaders in these fields never saw the changes coming.

The higher-education industry is on the verge of such a transformative re-alignment. Many Americans agree that a four-year degree is vastly overpriced — keeping many people out of the market — and are increasingly questioning the value of what many colleges teach. Nevertheless, for those who seek a certain level of economic security or advancement, a four-year degree is absolutely necessary. Clearly, this is a situation primed for change. In as little as a decade, most colleges and universities could look very different from their present forms — with the cost of a college credential plummeting even as the quality of instruction rises.

Worth reading in full at THIS LINK.

Solar Energy in Germany

The expense of solar energy subsidies is prompting a re-thinking of governmental efforts for "Green" energy to replace traditional electricity sources.  From Der Spiegel:

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country's transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future.

Note....that's Billion, with a B.  100 billion euros.  Even with the recent fall in the value of the euro, that's a LOT of money.  With the demands on Germany to bail out the PIIGS, politicians are realizing they can't have it all.

Read the whole story from Der Spiegel at THIS LINK.

Pass the nuts, mate

Having journeyed to Australia, Mister Bear knows that it's a spirited place with plenty of individualism to go around.  Leaving out the part about those koalas that try to be "bears" but aren't, the Land Down Under is a great place.  They've also got some common sense, IMO, in their legal system.  Or at least in this case.

From the Daily Mail comes this story:

A nutty snack company in Australia has won the right to call itself Nuckin Futs, despite an official ruling that it was offensive.

A solicitor representing the Gold Coast company argued that the name was not offensive because the words it suggested were commonplace in everyday Australian language.

It has taken almost a year but after rejecting the initial application, the Trade Marks Examiner has now agreed to accept the Nuckin Futs trademark - as long as the company does not aim its marketing at children.  Mr White said that would not happen.

Hat tip to the Language Log.

More thoughts on the Strike

Jonah Goldberg had a suggestion that he posted yesterday, the day before The Strike:

Very soon Wikipedia will go dark for a day to protest something called SOPA. During this event — future historians will call it a “knowledge eclipse” — no one under the age of thirty will know how to confirm or disprove a statement of fact.

It’ll be awesome.

Tomorrow you should go up to a 20-something and tell them things like “the fern is the world’s most popular carnivorous plant” and “Henry VIII invented the internal combustion engine, but kept it secret to protect the environment” and they will have no choice but to believe you as they will have no idea how to use, never mind find, a “reference book.”

Cats have gills, Larry Storch was the 37th president, the 48-53rd floors of the Empire State Building contain the real White House, the pre-internet Wikipedia took up 700,000 floppy disks, Al Gore was once the Vice President of the United States: True? False? It doesn’t matter. These are just a few things you can tell these kids today and they’ll have to believe you. What choice will they have?

Why didn't I think of that?

The Strike

Much is being made today of the "strike" by many websites, including Wikipedia, to go "dark" in protest over two bills pending in Congress.  Richard Fernandez writes at PJ Media that this may just be another useless gesture:

But one or two day ‘strikes’ aren’t going to do much as a long as the forces which are creating a gargantuan and intrusive state are at loose.  The administration may simply wait the ‘Internet strike’ out and try again until they get what they want.  An activist government wielding ever-growing tools of central planning has its own dynamic. The rise of favored groups is an essential feature of a highly regulated economy.

The process is often simple. Find a bogeyman — corporations will do — and by “fighting it” get the power to pick winners and losers whether in health care, finance, energy and the Internet.  And soon all problems will be ‘fixed’.

Mister Bear doesn't have enough readers for a strike here to be more than useless.  So I stayed "light" today.  Read Fernandez's complete article for more thoughts on the inevitable governmental urge to control the Internet.

What was that definition of insanity??

You know....the one about doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

This concluding paragraph from a story about Greek sovereign debt brought it back to mind.  It quotes Edward Parker, Managing Director for ratings agency Fitch's Sovereign and Supranational Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"(Disorderly default), would be, for us, the really damaging situation, but one which we are certainly not expecting to happen because, clearly, in a rational situation you would think Greek politicians and European policy makers would ensure that it doesn't happen." 

Of course, Greek politicians and European policy makers haven't acted rationally in past debt situations, including the most recent package of bailouts.  So, why should we expect them to do so now?

Hope you're shorting the Euro.  That would be my forex currency play.  The only question is, how long will Germany, and the German people allow themselves to be dragged down by the wasteful actions of other countries?

Full story can be found HERE.

More evidence to confirm common sense

For years, I've scratched my head at the headlong rush to provide unearned praise on our schoolchildren.  It spilled over into sports and interpersonal relationships.  Everyone has heard the stories of soccer games where no one keeps score and everyone gets a trophy.

Turns out that the common sense response of "You have got to be kidding me" is turning out to have scientific support.  From the Washington Post:

A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings.

“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has backfired.”

They say that free advice is worth what you pay for it.  Seems that unearned praise has the same value.

Read the whole story HERE.

Controlling the uncontrolable

Charles Crawford, from the UK, writing about Tom Harris, the "Social Media Tsar" (sic) of the Labour Party:

Of course the really idiotic thing about all this is that Labour thinks it needs a 'Social Media Tsar' at all. The whole point, Labour, of social media is that it is a spontaneous crowd-sourcing Towers of Babel chaotic phenomenon in which order emerges as it does. It's utterly unsuited to any sort of political busy-body Tsardom. See?

But, if your natural inclinations run towards central control, you want to control everything.  Much like the old line "If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail".

White Stuff

Mister Bear lives in a forest that has a relatively moderate climate. Not like Minnesota or Phoenix, to mention two extremes. Mostly, it's just pleasant and comfortable. All that changed yesterday, when OMW (Old Man Winter) decided to drop about 3 inches of the white stuff outside the cave.

Now, compared to Buffalo, that's just a dusting. But MB has grown to like the milder climes. So it looks as though it was a good idea to stock up on milk, bread, steaks and the like. There's a snow shovel somewhere, but I'm hoping that Al Gore's global warming comes in the next day or two.

Rube Goldberg contraption of the month

I had to watch it more than once to catch exactly how it did everything. But, you know, some mornings I'm just this lazy.

Mexican Hat Dance??

From Fox News, with a hat tip to iOwnTheWorld:

MEXICO CITY – Mexican medics are drawing catcalls after they dropped a heart being rushed to a hospital for a transplant.

Mexico City police say they used a helicopter to deliver the heart in "a rapid, precision maneuver." But after exiting the chopper, a medic stumbled and the plastic-wrapped heart tumbled out of a cooler onto the street.

The medic returned the heart to the cooler, and the Health Department confirms it arrived at the hospital where the recipient was waiting.

There has been no information on whether the transplant was successful.

Was this a governmental health care system? Or just their version of an HMO?

Not a rug

Mr. Bear didn't end up as a rug in some cabin. Though he was close to being declared legally dead for being missing for so long. Nothing serious, though. Just a bit of life getting in the way of blogging. A couple of my friends in the forest have started expressing themselves with their own blogs, so I couldn't let them be the only ones.

See you around.