Stay in School or Die!

In a speech just this week, Senator John Kerry urged the nations young people to stay in school, tough it out, or else you might end up getting "stuck in Iraq". I guess he was trying to get the point across that your schooling could be a matter of life and death. School is of the utmost importance. But, come on now! Are you really screwed if you, say, don't finish high school?

Here's a list of notable people who are high school dropouts:

Albert Einstein
John D. Rockefeller
Henry Ford
Walt Disney
Abraham Lincoln
Carl Sandburg
Diana, Princess of Wales
Dave Thomas (of "Wendy's fame", not the comedian/actor)
President Martin Van Buren
Andrew Carnegie
John Chancellor
"Colonel" Harlan Sanders (okay, maybe this one's not so notable)
Charles Dickens
George Eastman
Clark Gable
President Andrew Jackson
Ray Kroc (arguably the most successful rags-to-riches business story of all time)
Prime Minister John Major
William Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw
George Washington
Florence Nightingale
Walt Whitman
Peter Jennings
Sean Connery

Some people are just bound for glory, hard to imagine that graduating high school would have made a difference with these people.

What a difference a couple decades make...

Then....

And Now...

Are there worse things to be called?

With recent soldier deaths in Afghanistan, the threat of global warming, and a myriad of other issues facing Canada, what has our government's collective knickers in a knot? None other than the reprehensible act of Conservative Peter McKay alluding that ex-girlfriend Belinda Stronach is a dog. Naturally, the NDP want a resignation, the Liberals want a tearful apology, and the Bloc want him killed.

But hold on a sec. What is wrong with the label: "dog"?

Behold these examples taken from normal English language discourse:

"She's a hard worker! She's been working like a dog all week to get that proposal done."

"Check her out, dude. She's a total fox!"

"That reporter is a total bloodhound, her articles are my favourite."

"She's really nice. Its only her bark that's worse than her bite, once you talk to her, you'll see."

"Pretty fancy snowboarding, there. Wish I could hot-dog like that!"

I can think of another word that is far worse for a modern day woman to be called. Can you guess the word I'm thinking of? Here's a clue...

So French is a Language on the Decline, eh?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a bus-taker, not because I'm some super keen, fist-in-the-air, granola-eating environmentalist. I'm cheap. Anyways, on the bus, there's a couple of people that prefer to converse in French. In the East, this is probably a regular thing, but in Western Canada? This had me wondering about the pervasiveness of French in Canada, just how is the old gal doing?

No sooner did I ponder this, than I spotted a language survey on the CBC's website. I hopped all over it, naturally, seeking to satisfy my raging curiosity that has had me in its grip. In terms of Canada, its a predictable 21.9 Million English to 7.2 Million French. An interesting side note is that Canada's population is around 35 million or so. So there's roughly over 10 million people getting by in Canada not speaking a lick of English. Having briefly worked in Quebec, this seems to align with reality. Try ordering popcorn at Kernels in a mall in Laval, you'll agree with this.

So what about Alberta? What are languages number 2 and 3? It can't be French. It has to be the Chinese languages, or Ukrainian? How about German? Well, since you ask, English speakers are at 2.8 Million, Chinese Languages are 77,000, and French comes in strong at 53,000. French has overtaken German as the third most spoken language in Alberta. What the heck? French? The third most spoken language in Alberta? BC even has 54,000 French speakers.

Even our attitude towards French seems to be changing. A recent survey from The Commissioner of Official Languages found that 72 pecent of respondents were of the opinion that bilingualism "is important". 84 percent thought bilingualism was important for career advancement. Recently, I saw the movie "The Rocket" the biopic film about Maurice Richard. I'm also aware of "Bon Cop Bad Cop", which is the number one Canadian-made movie of all time. Both movies have an intertwined French theme about them. French seems to be becoming cool.

On a world stage, the number of French speakers in the past 50 years has tripled. It is an official language of The International Olympic Comittee, FIFA, The United Nations, and the IMF. French is also an official language of 33 nations, second only to English's 45. So clearly French is a major player when it comes to global languages.

My personal feeling is that it is solely due to the French Canadian Pop Artist "Mitsou" and her breakout smash hit "Bye Bye Mon Cowboy" in the late eighties.

The inertia from this hit song steamrolled over a referendum that failed, and has wreaked havoc on the separatist cause which has dwindled, and may have even played a role in Canada's Gold Medal win at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olymics. The evidence speaks for itself.

What. You have a better reason?

How Much Are People Willing To Take?

People are sheep, at least in the techical world. They are told that they need at least a Pentium Core Duo processor with 1 Gig of RAM, even if the person only uses Office, surfs the Net, and checks email. In fact, I do all these things, including .NET development, on my Pentium III 800MHz bought in 2000.

Well, here's the latest thing that we're being forced to swallow: Windows Genuine Advantage. It is a Grim Reaper, or sniper rifleman, constantly hovering over your nifty new install of Windows Vista. Its coming to light that WGA does fun things like only allowing you to move it ONCE to a second device, or not allowing you to install some versions on a Virtual Machine. This is not to mention that Microsoft is still grappling with all sorts of reported false positives out there: people with legitimate copies of Windows, have changed a video card, or moved to another new PC, or some other legit activity, but are locked out of their OS's. To add insult to injury, they also get a prompt basically accusing them of piracy.

Windows Genuine Advantage will hover over you like a hawk, and probably behave like a retarded bloodhound. You are going to be so unbelievably closely monitored that you will probably end up buying two or three additional $299 licenses, just to save yourself the headache of the false positive.

This really fries my bacon. Microsoft is behaving like we're all a bunch of coniving pirates, wringing our hands at the prospect of screwing over Microsoft. So if this has me all in a lather, how many more of me are there out there? At what point do people just say "screw it" en masse and give the Mac, or linux, a try?

Vista is RTM (Release to Manufacture) in November, and hits consumers in January. The technical press is already all over this WGA Gestapo topic, it remains to be seen if people get the message.

Surely somebody out there will say "to hell with all of this", and install Linux, or go out and buy a Mac. If this happens, my faith in humanity will be restored.

Our Zoo. Not too bad!

My employers recently sent our entire IT department to the Zoo, to get away from the grind for a day, expand our horizons, and learn something non-technical for a change. Mighty nice of them, eh?

Anyway, my reason for posting this is to give a big thumbs up to the Calgary Zoo. I had a couple tours: one primate tour, one Destination Africa tour. These tours were great! If you get a chance, go to the website and check the calendar for either the family tours or the adult tours. The zoo-keepers are unbelievably knowledgeable and pretty passionate about the subject matter. If you don't get a zoo-keeper, you'll get a tour by a "docent", who are basically volunteers who are pretty smart about zoology.

The tour of the primates I was really into because as the zoo-keeper talked about each of the primates, he explained where each fit in to the whole evolutionary chain. I really dig evolutionary biology so I absorbed alot of what he said. For instance, the pygmy marmoset is the only primate that has assisted childbirth, like humans. The Lowland Gorilla is the only known primate that is self-aware, aside from humans. So as these tidbits were flowing forth in this tour, you get the impression that the homo sapien primate is like an all-star team of primate traits. We got all of the good stuff. Anyways, this tour is just one of the many programs anyone would be nuts not to take advantage of.

It was almost painful to return to work the following day. But there was solace in the fact that I had my regular Friday off. Whew!