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A Whale For The Killing? Where Are You Farley?
It seems to Cass that if it is wrong to have Japanese kill whales for food then it is just as wrong to follow a bunch of Eskimo hunters into the killing waters and watch them kill one of these remarkable animals. Hypocrisy, Cass would say. Just because years ago, Indians killed hundreds of Buffalo to get a couple of chunks of meat doesn't mean they can do the same thing to-day. Even if they used a more humane method such as a machine gun rather than breaking legs of the helpless beasts it would still be wrong. According to an article in the Toronto Sun, Noah Annahatak told the Canadian press that at first he was scared because the huge trusting animal that hasn't been hunted for years was right under their boat and had he suspected that he would be sliced up into whale nuggets it might have turned them all into the water. Now to male this story more palatable to you who read this trashy column, I would point out the mighty hunter used traditional native weapons to kill the whale quickly. It only lingered on for 30 minutes. Annahatak's traditional grenade tipped harpoon exploded inside the giant but didn't kill it. While suffering for the blade indeed its body and the steel shards that tore apart its flesh more traditionional weapons were used for 30 minutes frightening and confusing the whale as it was hit by shot gun blasts that blew out its eyes. Apparently a native harpoon was used and of course traditional gas powered engines and likely a few shots from Canadian Ranger rifles. The fishery spokesman said it was a rapid hunt and the whale did not actually suffer. Not wanting to pretend I know more than a fishery expert I would like to point out a paper cut is painful and I suspect having ones face shot full of shotgun pellets and a grenade blowing up your insides would not be the death wished by any of us. He , Patrick Vincent pointed out the whale was stunned by the grenade. Very comforting to myself and the whale. And if you listen to the animal and look at its terror filled eyes before they were blown out, you can still hear it screaming. Here Is Another Court Case Not About Money "Lawyers for Tim McLean Jr.'s family said the goal of the suit is not money but to try to spur improvements to bus security and force the RCMP to explain why officers didn't board to stop the suspect from further defiling his body." How noble. If it is not about money why not ask for $1.00 and leave it as a suit for justice? If it is about "It's about accountability and responsibility for what happened to their son," then account without the dollar signs. No, it is a go for gold here and that include an ex-wife who is also not going after money. 12 of them so far and each speaking through their lawyer saying it is not about cash. Nonsense, It is a cash grab. Someone will now see if they can get by the defenses of this small school with an enrollment of about 110 students room kindergarten to grade 12 .. Harrold Independent School District is to allow teachers to carry arms. The policy was introduced in October, 2007, but is only coming to public attention now, re-igniting a debate over whether guns have a place in schools. "I can lead my children from a tornado. I can lead my children from a fire. I can lead them from the railroad tracks that run about 400 feet from us. I can lead them from a toxic spill quickly. I cannot lead them from an active shooter," David Thweatt, the district's superintendent, said in a telephone interview. "We had to come up with a solution." A Nevada-based firearms training centre has offered every teacher in Harrold a free, four-day handgun course. This community minded company apparently can train a shooter to hit a dodging target in four days when you and I know police and military personnel who fire hundreds of round a year cannot hit the same target unless it stands still for 30 seconds at no more than 25 yards away. "Finally, a public school gets it right," said Ignatius Piazza, founder of the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. "To prevent a school shooting massacre you must be prepared to stop the attack immediately. Placing a gun in the hand of a trained teacher is the answer." Cass would add in case of an attack by a war plane maybe we should give the teacher an anti aircraft gun and while we are at it an anti tank missile? And here is the rational behind the necessity direct from the National Post: Mr. Thweatt insisted the gun policy is necessary because the school is about 30 minutes from the nearest sheriff's office in Vernon, Tex., 240 kilometres northwest of Dallas. There is at least one sane voice in Texas: Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the policy "embarrassing" and "the stupidest move that I have seen done in public education. "This is the sort of thing that puts us on late-night TV in Texas. Cass adds, Capreololine One Of The Last Confederate Widows Dies The mother of three children from a second marriage who loved to make fried peach pies, Hopkins died Sunday at a hospital in Helena. Other Confederate widows are still living, but they don't want any publicity, Martha Boltz of the United Daughters of the Confederacy said. Hopkins grew up in a family of 10 children, did laundry and cleaned house for William M. Cantrell, an elderly Confederate veteran in Baxter County whose wife had died. When he offered to leave his land and home to her if she would marry him and care for him in his later years, she said yes. She was 19; he was 86. "After Mr. Cantrell died (three years later in 1937), I took a little old mule he had and plowed me a vegetable garden ... It was hard times; you had to work to eat," she said in a 2004 interview. Hopkins later married Winfred White. In all, she was married four times. "I didn't do anything wrong," Hopkins said. "I've worked hard my whole life ... I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want people to gossip about it." Vegetarians Hate me. I had the pleasure of providing hotel space to two day trippers while they scoot across Canada before heading home safely to the Hongcover area. I of course had dinner ready for them when they arrived and that is when they announced they were (gasp) vegetarians. They being of the vegetarian persuasion as well and a more smug, self-righteous people I have never met regardless that they were staying free at my abode. I have never heard such crap as they talk about their food choices and recipes, they sound like a bunch of Baptists who have been saved by being washed in the precious blood of Jesus. I used to think that a bunch of golfers had the world's most boring conversations, but then changed my opinion to joggers/runners as they discussed such things as running shoes and shin-splints. Vegetarians, however, have them beat and are now the reigning champions in the world's most boring department. I offered the information that I was a meatitarian, and like raw food vegans, the most extreme form of meatitarian was the "Inuit". If you were an Inuit, you would eat nothing but meat or animal products. This is followed by the next level, the "Mongols". Mongols will eat a vegetable dish as long as it has a meat/animal product in it. Thus, green beans have to be cooked with a bit of bacon, sauerkraut must accompany bratwurst and broccoli and Brussels sprouts are acceptable only if served with a cheese sauce. Most mainstream meatitarians (such as myself), however, are content to eat veggies as long as the entree is some form of meat or animal product. Being a meatitarian requires some effort and dedication, but there is is. Vegetarians are a singularly humourless lot who failed to see the humour in my dissertation. I suppose the most irritating aspect was that none of them had any qualifications in bio-chemistry or oncology, possessing instead degrees in advanced BS, but were all convinced that everything from meat to power transmission lines caused cancer. They have happily left their cousin once removed no doubt thinking I have a loose screw. For my part I am certain that sometime before Christ there was a cataclysmic event where the earth rose up and tumbled all the nut cases to the west coast and then, god in her wisdom allowed the Rocky Mountains to rise up and keep them there. Unfortunately they might come back next summer as a white man discovered how to fly over the obstacle put there by god. I would Hope The Judge Is Canadian... He Sits In Ontario The punk has been in jail since 2005 awaiting extradition to the USA. If it is a shortage of drivers, Cass will offer her car and drive him to the border herself. At the same time, however, the judge has rejected a Crown suggestion that a Scarborough mosque frequented by the family amounts to a hotbed of terrorism. I do not understand why except they do to want to hurt a religious institution. Why not I do not know. Abdullah Khadr, has been jailed in Toronto since he returned to Canada in 2005, fighting extradition on a U.S. warrant that alleges he sold arms to al-Qaeda while living in Pakistan. He will remain jailed for the foreseeable future. Mr. Khadr is alleged to be an arms supplier for al-Qaeda,” writes Mr. Justice Gary Trotter, in a 25-page Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision released late Tuesday. “… I am hard pressed to be think of a more serious set of offences.” I would suggest Canada give back his passport, send him on a flight and take his pass port away from him. Better still give him to the tender care of George W. Bush... who is not much better than himself.
It Is A Good Bill By a wide margin, the Canadian Medical Association voted yesterday to oppose Bill C-484, "and any legislation that would result in compromising access for women to the medical services required to terminate a pregnancy." C-484, "The Unborn Victims of Crime Act," was introduced as a private bill by Conservative MP Ken Epp of Edmonton. It has passed second reading in the House of Commons. The act would make it a crime to take the life of a fetus against the wishes of the mother-to-be. Currently, if a pregnant woman is attacked and the unborn child dies, the attacker can't be charged because the fetus has no legal standing as human.
DOCTORS AS 'CRIMINALS' Epp has been at pains to say the bill does not aim to limit abortion but the CMA, which represents about 67,000 doctors, was unconvinced. Dr. Robert Ouellet, who assumed the CMA presidency yesterday, said the physician group opposes the bill. Cass says only their conscience is at risk here. Ouellet said the CMA has a legal paper suggesting the bill, if passed, could make a doctor who performs an abortion vulnerable to charges. The bill also came under fire from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, which suggested C-484 establishes "fetal personhood."
Do You Know Bletchley Park?
The campaign has tended to focus on the scientific advances, the cracking of the Enigma Code and the role of the codebreakers in hastening the end of the war. Yet Bletchley Park also stands as a monument to two often undervalued aspects of the British character - secrecy and eccentricity.
The intelligence gathered there was, simply, the best-kept secret in history, and it was created and preserved by some remarkable, and remarkably unconventional, people. The Park should be preserved as a memorial to scientific and military ingenuity, but also to the triumph of discretion and human oddity, two vital British traits that have decayed along with Bletchley Park over the past half century.
Sigmund Freud wrote: “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.” Britain's wartime codebreakers proved him wrong. Some 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park, codenamed “Station X”. Several thousand more were privy to the intelligence gleaned from breaking the Enigma Code, codenamed “Ultra
Even in an age when eccentricity was more tolerated, two stand out. Dilwyn “Dilly” Knox was a classical papyrus expert from Cambridge who pioneered the Enigma analysis. He often worked in his pyjamas, smoking a large pipe, into which he occasionally stuffed his sandwiches by mistake. He recruited only women to help, and only tall ones. A keen and spectacularly dangerous driver, he invented a pseudo-mathematical equation to defend his speeding. After one excursion in the lanes around Bletchley Park he remarked happily: “It's amazing how people smile and apologise to you when you knock them over.”
Still more remarkable was Alan Turing, the mathematician and logician who developed the electromagnetic bombe used to decipher Enigma messages. Shabbily dressed, notoriously absent-minded, Turing was a homosexual, a marathon runner, a loner and a genius. He cycled around in a gas mask because of his allergies, and chained his teacup to a radiator to deter thieves.
All of this and more saved us from the Germans who were not allowed gooks.
Cass Can Add Nothing But Thank You PM
John George Diefenbaker was one of if not the last truly honest politicians to be Prime Minister of Canada. The Press Corps criticized him for not serving alcohol at receptions. They had to buy their own booze. He lost the confidence of parliament on nuclear weapons late one night when the Liberals thought Pearson could win a majority. Pearson's wife, president of the anti nuclear weapons group resigned so her husband could coddle up to JFK and drop his moral stance against nuclear proliferation.
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