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This week's editorial in Eye Magazine raises the thorny issue about circumcision -- and asks, why is it still legal? A baby doesn't agree to have the procedure done. There are no health reasons to do it. There is only tradition and religion. So why is it still legal? Recently the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons said that it was " a non-therapeutic and medically unnecessary intervention " -- yet, seems to turn a blind eye at the practice with the statement: "If for religious or cultural reasons you decide to perform an infant male circumcision, ensure that your skills are current." It seems like a double standard. There are other practices that religions are OK with, yet are against the law, and aren't allowed -- why this one? The article is a convincing one for a change. For such a civilized society, we still don't have laws against such barbaric practices.

On my way home from work this afternoon, the little one was sitting beside me, smile on her face, lost in ABBA -- so she didn't see what happened at the Leslie station. A teen got on the bus, dressed in a tight tank top and track pants with crotch to spare. She strutted with attitude. Sat down, and dared anyone to give her an excuse. Then a small white butterfly flew in through the open bus door just before it closed. It went straight, and slammed right into the window. There was no way out. It struggled. Reversed. Went at the window again. Repeatedly. There was no opening. Minutes went by as the bus waited for the driver to return from the station. The teen got up, went to the window, caught the butterfly gently in her hand, strutted to the door, pushed it open, went outside and released the butterfly. She strutted back to her seat, sat, and dared anyone to give her an excuse. That was a spark of hope.

The Memory Hole and its sister blog site is maintained by Russ Kick -- a man on a mission to free information. Using the US freedom of information act, Kick obtains once secret documents and publishes them on his site. He obtained hundreds of images from the US government of Iraqi prisoners being tortured for example -- after he published them, the government scrambled to put a lid on it.

This one is for our American friends who've had enough of politicians -- it's an extremely funny clip of Bush and Kerry. Warning however: you may not want to vote after seeing this! [ Thanks, Debkanti, for the link. ]

Congratulations to Lance Armstrong. I know he won. Other than that, I could care less about watching cycling on TV. I'd rather cycle. If you haven't had enough of Lance and company during the Tour de France, check out this Baseline article -- it's about his bikes. It's actually a pretty good article. When the difference of 10 watts of energy or a few grams of extra mass could mean the difference between winning and losing a race, you've got to have serious engineering like what went into creating Armstrong's bikes.

After Marc Lepine 's 1989 shooting spree of women at the University of Montreal, law enforcement and the government realized that they didn't have a clue who owned guns out there, or what their criminal history was. From the outset, the gun lobby opposed any list of gun owners -- outright -- after all, they weren't criminals. Garry Breitkreuz , the Charlton Heston of the North, wants the whole scrapped. The passage of new firearms act in 1995 gave the government instructions to not only increase penalties for firearm offenses, but also to create a gun registry -- a huge database that could be accessed by law enforcement across the country. The problem however, was that law enforcement agencies around the country were not integrated, reported to different authorities, had conflicting interests -- and some provinces, just didn't want to have the registry period. You can guess who those cowboys are. The result: a $2M project is now estimated to have cost taxpayers...

Dollar General plans to open two new stores everyday in the US. Their processes to get a new store up and running is a closely guarded competitive differentiator, as it can take them a mere 8-days to get a store ready for customers. Dollar General needs to move this fast, as the $6.9 billion company competes directly against Wal-Mart -- and they've been winning -- they take 4.3 cents of every dollar sold compared to Wal-Mart's 3.5 cents -- and each new store opening brings more cash to the bottom line. With 6,930 stores in the US, they're already the largest discounter -- and adding 700 more this year won't hurt a bit.

Baseline's third annual survey of the top US CIOs show dismal results for the IT cause in corporations. The survey checked to see if CIOs made it into the group of top five officers in companies. From 1,000 companies -- or 5,000 officers -- there were only 47 CIOs (or IT executives). Corporations continue to reward IT executives for, and equate IT's productivity with, keeping budgets down. IT executives just aren't seen as contributing to the strategic direction of the company or helping with the bottom-line.

Remember the RBC debacle back in June? It affected about 10 million customers -- impacted payroll deposits -- and was all a result of programming errors introduced by a developer. The code just wasn't tested sufficiently, introduced during the week -- during the peak hours -- all things that shouldn't happen in the banking industry. Further, when criminal-types heard the news, they pounced immediately with phishing attacks, sending RBC customers to fake sites to collect their account information. RBC is considering dropping service fees for the month of June to compensate customers -- that would cost them $165 million in revenue. They haven't said what they're going to do with the employee yet, but I sense a flailing, with the right dose of tar-and-feathering, and maybe even stoning to happen.

From Baseline Magazine -- read the latest on Wal-Mart's progress on their RFID efforts. Things don't look so good -- their read rates remain dismal, different products may require different technology, and there is no indication that there will be a payback on the horizon -- Wal-Mart, however, is keeping the noise down on their 'pilot learnings' and being very optimistic on achieving their targets.

Teilhard Technologies has been granted patents in the US and Canada for their ETL method of EAI integration. Their method speaks to some of the basics of ETL that's current employed by many other EAI providers. Teilhard has already opened conversations with some EAI providers to ask for money via license fees for use of processes they have the patent rights to. This is going to be another case of bring out the lawyers.

My wife and I went to see this year's production of A Midsummer's Night Dream (MND) at the Stratford Festival. MND stands up to a lot of interpretation -- and it survived this one too, although for the life of me, I can't understand why Shakespeare gets reinterpreted. This time, it was reinterpreted and set somewhere in the Spain. The play has stood the test of time -- over 400 years -- really, it's OK folks -- no need to be artsy-fartsy and change the damn play. The Spanish interpretation just distracted from the play. Having said that, the faeries were really cool. They were done very well. I took some pictures while in Stratford -- check them out.

I just read this scary story in this week's Now Magazine. For anyone who goes driving around outside of the GTA, you have surely noticed over the last number of years the epidemic of deforestation and consumption of arable land to construct obscenely large houses on sprawling properties. The economic weight of the practice is killing taxpayers, as we are the ones who foot the bill for the wealthy, tax-evading parasites' infrastructure -- you know -- when there was a forest or a farm, we didn't really need to pay for the water supply out there -- or the sewage or the hydro or the roads. The Ontario Government just released their Places to Grow infrastructure plan -- and they will no longer provide any money for infrastructure in areas set aside for greenbelt protection. Great! Smart! But there's one problem, that Wayne Roberts of Now points out -- the planners forgot about food. Food should be considered part of our infrastructure. Yet, the Government gives no p...

From entertainment to gadgets, Japanese pop culture and consumer trends are becoming more influential in the world. Japanese schoolgirl-watch has now become past-time of marketers looking for the next trends -- no longer is it the inner city kids. Read the article in BusinessWeek.

BusinessWeek's latest cover story heralds the end of Scott McNealy -- of course, we've heard this before, but is it true this time around? The article interviews many of Sun's former executives who candidly discuss the episodes of McNealy not listening to his lieutenants, ignoring market trends and trusting in the prowess of Sun. The market performance of Sun over the last few years however is anything to brag about. With the industry picking up, you'd think Sun would be gaining some ground, but they haven't.

This takes me back ... ;-) [Intro] There's dancin' behind movie scenes behind those movie scenes -- saddi rani She's the one that keeps the dream alive from the morning, past the evening, to the end of the light [chorus] Brimful of asha on the 45 (x4) I'm dancin' behind movie scenes behind those movie screens -- Asha Bhonsle She's the one that keeps the dream alive from the morning past the evening to the end of the life [chorus] And singing illuminate the main streets and the cinema aisles We don't care about no government warning About the promotion of the simple life and the dams they are building [chorus] [bridge] Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, everybody needs a bosom (x3) mine's on the 45 Mohammed Rafi ----------45! Lata Mangeshkar ---------45! Solid state radio------45! Ferguson Mono---------45! Non public-------------45! Jacques Dutronc and the Bolan Boogies ... and the Heavy Hitters and the chi-chi music All In...

EarthStation 5 is a sticks it to the RIAA, the MPAA, and just about anyone who hates P2P. EarthStation 5 is a company based out of Palestine -- yes, the Palestine in the heart of much violence and chaos. You download their software and you have access to everything that's shared online. Everything. And the beauty of EarthStation 5 ... the welcome litigation, as posted on their site: "Earthstationv Ltd., a Palestinian Corporation, does not accept any legal process via email, nor will we accept any attachments via email. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine."

Read an executive summary of Death by Meeting by Patrick M. Lencioni. It's given me a few ideas, but I'm not sure I want to put any of it practice, as people my lynch me. The book is about meetings -- meetings that are so boring, people yawn and fall asleep -- sometimes falling asleep before they yawn -- I've been in a couple of those. Lencioni recommends four types of meetings: The Daily Check-in -- lasting just a few minutes, the meeting is a stand-up; the purpose is avoid confusion amongst team members on what the daily priorities are. The Weekly Tactical -- this could be weekly or bi-weekly and focus on tactical issues. This meeting needs everyone to attend and set priorities, report on statistics and metrics. The Monthly Strategic -- this meeting is to focus on a couple of strategic issues and set direction. The Quarterly Off-Site Review -- these meetings are for review of strategy, management issues and team building. These meetings are for discussion purpose...

The New York Times reports of the use of Webjay -- an online tool to create and share playlists of audio files. More and more however, folks are realizing that they can use Webjay to also share their playlists of videos -- and even further, some more creative types are taking to making mashups -- remixing of videos, audio and photos to create new content. There's quite a few politically motivated mashups -- especially of George W. saying things that he just might say in public. hilarious! [This came to me from Slashdot .]

I just finished reading an executive summary of First In, Last Out , by John Salka with Barret Neville. It is a book on leadership as exemplified by the New York City firefighters . "First in, last out." That is the motto of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). It applies to the officers of the FDNY -- they are the first ones in, and the last ones out -- it demonstrates the trust, integrity, focus, commitment and intensity of their leadership. The book gives three disciplines of leadership: 1) commitment to reality -- that is the truth; 2) commitment to treating your people as assets -- they're the engines of your organization; and, 3) commitment to developing leaders at all levels of your organization -- it will help spread your influence as a leader and direct everyone in a common direction. The book is appears to be an inspiring one. If I have the chance, I'll be picking it up. [Order from: Amazon or ChaptersIndigo .]