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Here's a quick little post on the MSM stealing from blogs -- one a radio show, and the other, AP. When AP was contacted about the issue, they commented that because the source of their article was a blog, there didn't feel there was a need to give credit. Simply put, MSM isn't afraid of bloggers, because bloggers don't have the financial muscle to launch lawsuits. That's why stealing from bloggers really isn't theft. I suppose the copyright notification on most blogs doesn't mean much.

Tonight I attended the Hart House Lecture 2006 , Our own creative land: Cultural Monopoly & The Trouble With Copyright , by Michael Geist . I often visit Geist's blog, and find his arguments in support of user rights in the copyright landscape well thought-out, well informed, and most refreshing. User rights in copyright seems almost like an afterthought in laws, government and especially in the whims of corporations which seek to bilk earnings from the efforts of artists -- beyond what artists may wish -- and definitely beyond what is good for society. In his lecture, Geist looks at the new creative frontier being shaped by the internet and digital technologies, and what that means to the traditional copyright stakeholders -- and more importantly, what it should mean to new copyright stakeholders -- which includes you and me. Geist proposes a copyright solution for Canada that leverages the Creative Commons Licence model, but is also uniquely Canadian. He suggests that we

Dealing with the disasters of recent years, the world has learned one thing: early warnings save lives. From the South-East Asian Tsunami to the Katrina's visit on New Orleans, better preparedness for the impending disaster would have been the best preventative measures that could have been taken. The UN took the lead and convened a World Conference on Disaster Reduction -- held in Hyogo, Japan, from Jan. 18-22, 2005. Although disaster preparedness has been an interest of the UN for sometime, it was probably the SEA tsunami that really motivated the nations of the world to do something. Whether the interest continues is another story. For our sake, the interest better continue, as there appears to be no end of disasters promised for the future. This year, the third International Conference on Early Warning is being held this week in Bonn, Germany -- and the focus is on less talk, and more action. An interesting read coming out of the conference is the UN's Global Surve

Stephen Lewis's Race Against Time 2005 Massey Lectures are being re-aired this week on CBC's IDEAS. If you missed the lectures before, you can now listen to them all online or on your radio as they are aired each night. Last night's is available on demand from the website. Stephen Lewis is the very articulate UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and a commissioner of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health. He is however, beyond those titles granted to him in a bureaucratic organization -- he's a man with a passion for his Africa -- an Africa he remembers from his younger days when he traveled the continent after dropping out of University to find himself in life. He is eloquent in speech, and it is at times painful to listen to him recount the horrors HIV/AIDS have visited upon his Africa -- and the further horrors that have resulted due to our disinterest in the welfare of our fellow people.

A new film about the 1994 Rwandan genocide is being released this Friday. Shooting Dogs tells the story of the Rwandan genocide, when the Hutu majority took to the streets of Rwanda and mostly hacked to death 800,000 Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers, from the perspective of two outsiders: a Catholic priest and a teacher. The movie, which debuted in Kigali on today however, is being released amid some protests. The movie is apparently quite graphic in its treatment of the genocide, and that has reawakened the traumatic experiences of some of the survivors -- especially those that played extras in the movie. I feel for those that survived -- and are perhaps reliving the genocide due to the film. The movie isn't for them however. It's for us -- the rest of the world -- us that sat idly by and let it happened. Us that continue to sit idly by, while it continues to happen elsewhere. We've learned nothing -- we have felt no lasting pain from what happened in those 100

Bangladesh could prove to be an excellent study of how Islamic extremism rises in countries -- and how inaction against it could lead to a rapidly destabilizing force taking hold. Bandladesh suffers from poverty, ignorance -- it is a place where hope probably hasn't made a visit in many years. Natural disasters seem to strike the country on an annual basis -- so much so, that the world has grown tired of Bangladesh's cries. Forming out of this mess is a new fanaticism to the country -- one based on the Koran, that lectures on intolerance, hate and violence. The disaffected have given power to this fanaticism, and it's reaching out with claws to rake what little promise of a future the country may have. Islamic terrorism is becoming fashionable in the country -- a way of getting on the public soapbox. As frightening as suicide bombers are, they are not as frightening as the government's denial. If anything, the government is actually making it easy for the fanat

My wife read me Helen Henderson's column in this past Saturday Star's Life section, titled: We stoop to conquer . Henderson introduced me to a new word this weekend: sycophant -- defined as, A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people. [Source: Reference.com ] In her article, Henderson queries her readers: Are the yea-sayers in the ascendant these days? Is the world steeped in the cult of the crony? I sometimes wonder the very thing. In my day-to-day, I regularly encounter those that fear authority, or are looking to curry favour, and in response, kowtow and display stomach-churning reverence. The problem isn't the weasels' alone. It's those that bask in the weasel's adoration and fear. I know I'm sometimes guilty of holding my tongue -- usually because the survival instincts kick-in -- but too often have I been advised to curtail my tone or in one form or another, cripple the strength of my arguments in order n

This is a plug for my daughter's graduating class design show . She'll be bringing home a Bachelor of Design degree from York/Sheridan , the culmination of four years, countless hours and a whole lot of stress. The result -- her's and her peers -- will be on display from April 8th-12th at the Steam Whistle Brewery ( 255 Bremner Blvd ., Toronto). Family and friends can visit on Saturday, April 8th, at 5PM, and the doors will open to the public from the 9th-12th, 12PM-9PM. Check it out!

Bloody hell! -- as a Brit would say. Overusing the word ultra , ATI has announced their forthcoming graphics card, the FireGL V7350 , slated for graphics workstations. The graphics card will increase colour depth to over a billion colours, and be able to support desktop displays over 5000 pixels wide. In the V7350 configuration, the graphics card will support 1GB of high speed memory, and run at speeds exceeding a 3GHz Pentium processor by seven times! All for a measly $1,599.

A study by the University of Minnesota has found that atheists are the most distrusted group in America -- ranking below Muslims, recent immigrants and homosexuals. Not surprisingly, the intolerance was directly related to exposure to diversity, education and political beliefs. East and West Coast Americans were more tolerant, while the Midwest Americans were more likely to be intolerant. Update: March 27, 2006 On a related topic note, check out this image. Don't get me wrong ... I'm not anti-religion ... or necessarily an atheist ... I just don't believe in stupid people and I'm anti-stupid.

Destroying the Earth would be a very hard thing to do. It's been around for a while -- before us, and will be here after us. However, that won't stop people from thinking about ways to making it all go ka-blooey. At Things of Interest , there is a list of ways ending it all. Check out the site for the descriptions, but be warned, the details are gruesome ... although it will excite your average psychotic physics-geek. Fissioned -- feasibility rating: 2/10 Sucked into a microscopic black hole -- feasibility rating: 3/10 Blown up by matter/antimatter reaction -- feasibility rating: 5/10 Sucked into a giant black hole -- feasibility rating: 6/10 Meticulously and systematically deconstructed -- feasibility rating: 6/10 Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument -- feasibility rating: 7/10 Hurled into the Sun -- feasibility rating: 9/10 Ripped apart by Jupiter -- feasibility rating: 9/10

As the intelligent design madness spreads to England, it faces opposition from academics and intelligent people -- as well as from the clergy. In an interview with the Guardian , the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, backs the yanking of creationism from school curriculums. Williams problem: the confusion intelligent design is creating by teaching creationism as a theory. Intelligent design could end up weakening religion. I find this quite humorous. Science doesn't want ID, and religion is afraid they'll takeover!

Jon Carroll writes an excellent opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, re: the American Family Association's hate agenda against gay and lesbians. Carroll's words are a passionate defence of families under attack by the American Family Association -- single parent and couples who are gay, and adopt. More voices like Carroll's are needed to silence the hatred; to defend those who cannot defend themselves; to protect the children who are in happy homes today.

Here's some stuff that kept me awake a few weeks ago. Old news ... but still a good read. The New Middle East Oil Bonanza -- the oil rich Middle East states have about US$1 trillion locked away in foreign investments -- most of it difficult to trace, because they have highly diversified their portfolios via a complex network of investments. It's estimated that Middle East dollars are funding up to 45% of the current US account deficit. The investments aren't just foreign however -- there's huge spending at home as well. More progressive states, such as Qatar, are realizing that if they want to maintain their authoritarian rule, they have give their population something, and not let them be lured into fanaticism. They've got the money, but can they make it work? Yahoo's Boulevard Of Broken Dreams -- Yahoo! really wanted to become a media company, very much in the traditional sense, and went about trying to create content for its site. Unfortunately, most

Image Source: Bioethics The Earth revolves around the Sun. The speed of light is a constant. Apples fall to earth because of gravity. Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes. Elevated uric acid is linked to gout. Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease. Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins. Actually, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent. So write Michael Crichton in yesterday's New York Times. Patents have gone wild in the US. There hardly seems any logic in their application at times. Cric

Here's yet another example of how no good deed ever goes unpunished. This is this is the case of Stephen Heller, once an office temp at law firm Jones Day, who found incriminating evidence that Jones Day had warned client Diebold, that they were engaging in potentially illegal actions by using uncertified software in automated ballot boxes in California. Diebold went on to use the software anyway, which may have had an impact on the 2004 federal election. Jones Day didn't warn the state. Heller found the documents, brought it to the proper authorities, and the law got involved. Diebold was fired, and settled criminal charges out of court by paying a stiff fine. Now, two years later, after the dust has settled, Jones Day has brought three felony charges against Heller. Seems like there's a personal price to pay in the US for standing up for democracy. Is this truth, justice and freedom? Is this the American way? More and more it is becoming the American way. The

Michael Geist writes on his blog about a recent study released by the CRIA with little fanfare. Reason: the study counters the wailing from the music industry on the harm P2P users have been causing. Apparently, it's not that bad. For the people who downloaded music from P2P services, only 1/3 of their music actually comes from P2P sources. They mostly buy the rest. As well, the largest P2P users aren't teens or university students -- it's the 35-44 age group. The study goes on to emphasize that P2P music downloaders frequently buy the music they've downloaded -- or, have increased their purchasing due to new music they're exposed to via P2P services. Seems like trying before they buy isn't harming the industry at all.

On Friday, Nicole Wong, a Google Associate General Counsel, posted on the Google Blog that Google has won its case against the US government. You may recall that the US government had requested user search queries from Google in its efforts to resurrect its case to censor the internet -- especially to protect children from pornography. Google claimed that the government's request was going too far, and possibly violating user privacy. The court agreed with Google. For now anyway.

My wife and I caught the late show of Escape to Canada , last week at the Bloor Cinema . Escape to Canada is a hilarious documentary about a serious subject in troubling times. The documentary started out asking about Canada, and came back with the resounding musical score, "boring, boring, boring, boring, ...." That is what Canada is. Boring. However, something remarkable happened in the last five years: Canada became sexy. Canada's Summer of Legalization! Canada became sexy to the rest of the world -- and especially to ourselves -- due to our perceived liberalism, tolerance and freedom -- in stark contrast to George W. Bush's United States, which moved farther right during the same time. We defined ourselves over the last few years with our general acceptance of gay marriage, legalization of marijuana and the opening of our borders to US soldiers escaping from duties in Iraq. In other words, we defined ourselves on how very different we are from America --

Those who enjoy the English language, will probably find the FAQ over at the Oxford dictionary site, quite the place to get lost in. The FAQ is a database of questions that have been sent to the Oxford Word and Language Service team. Delving into the FAQ, you'll find answers to some typically asked questions, such as: What is the longest English word? (Clue ... the name of my site is up there.) Are there any words that rhyme with orange? (Nope.) What comes after once, twice, thrice? (Ooops!) What is the feminine equivalent of a misogynist? (There is one.) If palindromes are words which are the same spelt backwards, what is the word for a word which is another word spelt backwards? ('rats live on no evil star')

Scientology is not a religion. It's a cult. I need to preface with that because, Tom Cruise, scientologist looney, has blackmailed Viacom into pulling the South Park episode, Trapped in the Closet , from being aired again. In the episode, one of the South Park characters, Stan, is believed to be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard by scientologists -- and he tells Cruise that his acting is OK, but not that great. Upset by his failure in the eyes of the prophet, Cruise locks himself in a closet and refuses to come out. It's a hilarious episode, and this reaction is from a humorless Cruise. Too bad it didn't spawn any cartoon protests, including the sacking of embassies. Update: March 19, 2006 . Trey Park and Matt Stone responds to the scientology thrust with a parry. In a written statement , the South Park creators showed their evil fighting spirit. So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozini

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." -- Jamie Raskin, Professor of Constitutional Law from Washington's American University This has been floating around the internet. Read more at Snopes .

Joshua Bloch, Principal Software Engineer at Google was the keynote speaker at Library-Centric Software Design workshop last October: his topic focused on API design and why good design matters [PDF]. His presentation is pretty matter of fact, clear-cut, and speaks to developers. Good API design does really matter, because once an API has been released for consumption, modifications become an increasingly difficult task over time. Making sure the design is good up front then, would be a very good thing to do. Bloch offers realistic advise for developers, on how to go about designing good APIs -- not just the technical stuff either, but also the soft and more important advise, as the technical minded usually gets caught this most unexpected trap. Another good read from the workshop: Libraries and their Reuse: Entropy, Kolmogorov complexity, and Zipf's Law , by Todd Veldhuizen of Open Systems Laboratory [PDF].

Read a humorous ... and not so humorous article penned by Terry Jones, regarding the first casualty of war: grammar. Jones takes aim at the war on terrorism, asking, just how does one perpetrate a war on an abstract noun? War on terrorism is like "bombing murder" or trying to "annihilate mockery." What does it really mean?

This is a plug for my uncle's latest book: Cyril Dabydeen's Drums of My Flesh . Cyril is my father's brother, and though he's not as famous as another, more distant uncle -- he has held his own in the literary circles. Cyril is a poet, a short story writer and a novelist. Drums of My Flesh is his latest, and is a full length novel devoted to a familiar topic: Guyana. His writing pulls a lot from his past, growing up in Guyana. The topic isn't one that really interests me. I left at a young age, and don't really know the country as an adult. For me, home and country is Canada -- although it isn't my childhood. But if you're up for exploring a culture not quite your own -- or if you're Guyanese and want to revisit your past, Drums of My Flesh may not be a bad place to start.

I saw Beowulf and Grendel this past weekend with my wife. For whatever reason, this movie is not receiving a lot of attention, though it is a beautiful and well made retelling of a classic. I've never read the original -- I got introduced to the story via a comic book a long time ago. For a review from someone who knows the original however, check out aka.alias . The movie trailer can also be seen here . Another Beowulf movie is slated for 2007 -- and I'm looking forward to seeing that one as well -- although I expect that one will be more of a Hollywood film than this outing of the story was. The reason I'm looking forward to the 2007 version is Neil Gaiman -- who's been attached as a writer to the movie.

Well, it's official -- not long after Bush departed from the former Taliban stronghold, Harper showed up sniffing. The bad-boy from the wild-wild-west spent two days in Afghanistan, shoring up the morale of troops and telling them that Canada will stay -- and not leave at the first sign of trouble. Canadian troops are coming under increased fire from insurgents -- so much so that their rebuilding efforts now include a combat role. This didn't seem to phase Harper, who wandered around being macho. Unconfirmed reports even boast that the Prime Minister burped and farted, just like a real man, for the troops. Yeah, yeah -- whatever. While the headlines are applauding Harper, who stayed longer than the few hours Bush was there, the cynic in me has a different story to tell. Harper wasn't there for the troops -- he was there for himself. Harper is set to meet with Bush and Fox in Mexico at the end of this month. The brown-nosing has started. Harper's trip was to

Belief, Biology and the Human Brain: Is God All in Your Head? An Evening with Dr. Michael Persinger and Dr. Robert Buckman. Presented by the Toronto Secular Alliance . I paid 8-bucks to attend this lecture last Friday evening at the University of Toronto -- and now I wished I hadn't. First off, Buckman was great as bookends to Persinger -- I just wished it was all Buckman. The guy has wit. Persinger on the other hand was a complete bore. The man seemed to believe credibility comes from using big words to sound smart, complete with boring graphs and charts that most in the audience wouldn't have understood. He wanted to impress upon the audience that his research into using geomagnetism to make the brain feel an illusionary presence, was the evidence needed to debunk all religious belief and the existence of god. Fine. I don't doubt that the human brain could be manipulated into experiencing an illusion. But did he really have to bore us in the process? At times

Via Cox & Forkum : Yale has admitted Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, to the school. Read more in the Wall Street Journal . Hashemi rose to prominence in the Taliban regime due to his language skills (he speaks English, Pashto, Persian and Urdu), and traveled the world as their ambassador. In that capacity, he defended the Taliban's policies of intolerance, subjugation and violence. He now claims that his heart wasn't really in it. I don't know ... I'm ready to forget or forgive. How about you?

The Independent has a top 20 list of the Islamic inventions (and their inventors) that changed the world. The list was culled from the 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World . In summary: Coffee came from an Arab named Khalid, who was tending goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia. 10th century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham , was the first person the realize that we see because light enters our eyes. He invented the pinhole camera, and is credited with shifting physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one. Although a form of chess was played in ancient India, the chess we know today, comes from Persia. Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer, Abbas ibn Firnas , made several attempts at constructing a flying machine. In 875, at age 70, he stayed in the sky for about 10-minutes before crash landing. A crater on the Moon is named after him. Arabs combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and

Serbia's shame -- Yugoslavia's shame -- one of the monsters of our modern times, is dead. Slobodan Milosevic 's body was found in the detention centre at the Hague, where he was standing trial for the genocide he was responsible for inciting and perpetrating. I remember when I was in university, this animal was considered a hero by some Serb students. He was held up as the man who protected all Serbians. Turned out that Milosevic's protection meant the destruction of everyone who wasn't a Serb. Even as the reports came out of the atrocities the Serbian army was committing in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. He may be dead, but I hope Serbians never forget their shame. They made this man. They gave him power. They are guilty for letting him loose on innocents . (Yes, the Bosnians and Croats weren't that nice either -- but Serbia was the first to start beating the drums of war.) Update: March 12/06 Reuters has a report on the reaction to Milosevic's de

Researchers have come up with an alternative to black holes -- the remnant of supermassive stars collapsing on themselves at the end of their life to create a rip in space-time -- a singularity. Black holes, can't be directly observed, but indirect observations have put one in the centre of just about every galaxy out there. Still, there isn't a complete explanation for them. There are still unanswered questions, such as: Matter crossing a black hole's event horizon is destroyed by the singularity at the centre of the black hole. Quantum mechanics however, states that information can never leave the universe. Matter falling into a black hole is stretched by a black hole's gravity so that to outside observers, time stops. This violates quantum mechanics. These questions seem to have an answer in dark energy stars (also known as gravastars ) [PDF] -- stars that would appear to be, and behave just like black holes, but without violating quantum mechanics. In mode

Whether it's the ultrasound machine or infanticide to blame, the problem is real in Asia -- there are disproportionately more males than females -- opposite of what you would find in the developed nations of the world. What are guys to do who are sexually frustrated? Add that to other problems in the region, such as runaway economic growth, but a large population of poor and you have to start to wonder. With no women to keep them busy, men tend to get themselves into a whole lot of trouble -- such as finding extreme nationalism -- and that would be a problem for all of us. Read more in Foreign Policy .

No sooner had I finished reading Damien Sorresso's post on how idiotic Americans are, that I came across the video embedded below. Sorresso's post refers to three polls completed this week that confirms most Americans are idiots. In every poll, a majority of Americans believe that the Biblical creation story is the literal truth about how humans came into existence. And according to the Harris poll, 55% of Americans think that evolution, creationism and intelligent design should all be taught in science classes. According to the Zogby poll, a staggering 88% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 think that intelligent design should receive "equal time" in the classroom. All three polls also showed that the usual suspects are most likely to believe superstitious religious crap over science: Southerners, Republicans, those with no education beyond high school and old people. So if you're a Southern Republican over 55 with no higher education and you don't

This is bizarre ... a high school art teacher has been suspended, and may be fired, for suggesting that his students who want to prepare for college level art, may want to take some figure drawing classes on their own time. Figure drawing classes of course, have nude models. And that's the problem. Apparently the school board of Middleton, NY, thinks that to have a such a conversation with his students "could construe as being of a sexual or personal nature...or using [his] position as a teacher to put students into any situation reasonably likely to make them feel uncomfortable because of the injection of sexuality into...the substance of [his] comments”. These were senior students -- students that had completed grade 9, where they had already been exposed to art history, featuring numerous nudes. WTF?! Has anyone on the school board ever open an art text?

Not sure if this is authentic -- yes, you really can't trust the internet these days -- but this one sounds authentic. This is a rant from a social worker that finally had enough of the 60-hour weeks and $35K salary. I must caution you before providing the link however -- what follows will be very disturbing. If you've led a sheltered life -- don't like swear words -- you shouldn't click the link .

Described as, "bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user interactions on a graphical interaction surface," this nothing but cool! Multi-touch interaction allows for a system to sense more than one finger at a time at a touch-screen. The multiple fingers could belong to one person -- or more than one in the case of an interactive wall or tabletop. Play the demo (follow the link for a higher quality demo) to get a sense (pun intended) of the possibilities multi-touch allows for in a user interface. The technique demonstrated here is force-sensitive with a sensing resolution better than 0.1-inch at 50Hz. The technique relies on what is called frustrated total internal reflection -- the same idea behind the biometrics technology. How cool is that?! Check out Jeff Han's site for more cool!

Quick! Hide the women and children! Leave Aunt Petunia out on the veranda! The aliens are coming! That at least is the conclusion of some, to explain the red rain that fell over the Kerala district of western India for about two months in the late summer of 2001. The believers supposition is that a meteorite went ka-bloomy over Kerala, shedding microbes that mixed with the rain as it fell. The rain was so red that it coloured people's clothes pink. Initial analysis found the particles in the rainwater to be 50% carbon, 45% oxygen, with traces of sodium and iron, but with no DNA. The idea of alien rain isn't that far fetched. Some believe that life on Earth took hold after just such a seeding by interstellar biology. There non-believers, of course, and their idea is that the whole thing is just "bullshit." And since this is India we're talking about, I can only conclude that they must mean it was some sort of religious experience. I am standing up at

NASA & ESA have released the largest, most detailed portrait of a spiral galaxy: the gigantic Pinwheel galaxy (M 101). The fullsize original weighs in at over 450MB. The photograph was taken with the WFPC2 camera.

Go on over to the Smoking Gun for this doozy. A Texas bankruptcy judge has quoted from Adam Sandler's Billy Madison in a recent ruling -- dismissing the case before him for being "incomprehensible 1 ." In the accompanying footnote, the judge explains: 1 Or, in the words of the competition judge to Adam Sandler's title character in the movie, "Billy Madison," after Billy Madison had responded to a question with an answer that sounded superficially reasonable but lacked any substance, Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Deciphering motions like the one presented here wastes valuable chamber staff time, and invites this sort of footnote. Now I'

During the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, a wave of babies were brought into the world through rape. The rapes were conducted by Serbian paramilitaries on Croatian and Muslim women. No one knows how many were brutalized by the Serbian military -- but estimates put the figure as high as tens of thousands. In the town of Tuzla, in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, mothers would arrive at an orphanage to give birth, then quietly slip away -- leaving the babies behind. Those babies are now coming into their teens, and while some have found their relatives to take them in, many remain without identities, in a country where ethnicity matters. The country is now having to acknowledge some of the horrific acts committed by all sides in the war. The war crimes in the Hague and the movie Grbavica , about Muslim girl who comes to the realization that she was born from rape, are causing public dialogue. There is hope -- but I can't help but think that the regions troubles are far from over. It&

Criticizing the government is a high art in the free world -- epitomized by the United States, where both sides of the spectrum coexist in a chaotic harmony: those that stand proud to be an American and love their country no matter what; and those that take their right to criticize their country and make it into a lifestyle; sometimes the entire spectrum exists in the same person. It's one of those things that is very American. I posted a few weeks ago about the US Homeland Security harassment of Dwight Scarbrough , for exercising his very American right, of criticizing his government. Now comes a similar tale. This one again features the mysterious officers from Homeland Security, who seem more interested in cracking down on criticizing of the government than protecting the citizens they are to serve. George Barisich , president of the United Commercial Fisherman's Association, has been selling anti-FEMA t-shirts to express his displeasure in FEMA's less than stunnin

Video of the Feb. 3, 2006 protest rally outside the Danish embassy in London. Some of these people should be sent back from where they came from. They certainly haven't integrated well -- if they did, they'd realize that the freedom of speech that allows for people to burn flags (and in this case, incite terrorism) is the same freedom of speech that allows caricatures of religious figures. I agree, Muhammad does need defending -- but not from the Danes, of all people -- Muhammad needs defending from the likes of Osama bin Laden, who murder in his name.

How do you make a movie out of a first person shooter video game? Well, make the plot really simple to begin with. Soldiers are sent to investigate, secure and more importantly, kill monsters -- on Mars. To further make the plot simple for viewers, make all the characters one-dimensional. If you want to provide any kind of depth, do it with the absence of a back-story, but keep hinting that there is one. Being a first person shooter of course, you'll need lots of guns, including one with the ever so subtle name of B.F.G. Put that all together, and you've got an action movie with no brains. (Not that brains are required.) If you want said movie to be a potential hit, add a BIG name star -- preferably one with a really expressive face brow eyes head. For Doom , that star was the Rock -- an actor who can't lose the stupid name he granted himself to star as a wrestler. I like the Rock. For a tough guy, he can actually act, and he doesn't suffer from a speech

The Boogens suffers from a very bad title. I mean really, do you think you're going to be scared by watching a movie with that title? Sounds like cheese. It's not that bad however. It wasn't irritating, had OK acting, 80s effects, and a story to kill a little bit of time with. The story follows some miners sent to reopen a mine that was closed a long time ago, when a whole bunch of miners died in a cave-in. At least, that was the story of how they died. In reopening the mine however, the new miners set lose the monsters that lurk in the tunnels below the entire town. They come up from the mine -- but also the basements of people's homes and drag them away for food. It takes a while for our main characters to figure out what's going on -- and not early enough, as we get to see a few of them serve as munchies before the smarts start to kick in. Nothing is sacred -- even the little dog gets taken care of. If you need something to pass a Friday night, this o