The Friday Chat That Made The Internet What It Is

If I didn’t do Friday chat, the Internet would stop. That is what the voices tell me.

  • How Canadian are you? What a dumb question to pose in relation to immigration? What is the benchmark? If they asked a group of Haligonians when I was young the answer would be “not much”. We didn’t think much of Upper Canada, the US or New Brunswick for that matter – PEI was “queer Island” but a useful place to get beer when you were 18. We were Nova Scotians first and Canadians administratively. And enough with “visible minority” Only Canadians uses the term and it is stunned.
  • It is getting so close, people are starting to get nutty:

    “I like it, man,” Papelbon said. “I went to the Celtics [team stats] game (Wednesday night) and some guy came running up to me when I was sitting courtside and said, “We’re going to get 20 wins out of you next year!” I like that. I like the pressure.’

    It is an incredible line up they have accumulated over the winter. But that is what I said about last year. I still do not really know why you take a closer and make him a starter but I suppose it is all in the percentages, twenty wins is better than 35 saves.

  • Oh dear: “NDP plotting strategy to out-green its rivals“. You know what? I don’t care that much about green. What I mean is I am all for good stewardship and maximizing sustainability but I think that is a matter of prudence not a core political theory. A core political election platforms should be about change to justice, pervasive wealth creation, international security, that sort of stuff. In an election where green battles green, essentially a battle of filing cabinet arrangement techniques, I may stay home.
  • I take it the Central Committee never thought of this at the time.
  • I work with privacy law but even I am having a hard (pre-coffee) time translating this concept:

    It is likely that people wishing to take advantage of public information will still be required to apply for licences. “The reason we require licensing is to ensure that government information is not misrepresented or used to mislead the public,” said Mr Wretham. The Statute Law Database, an obscure if fascinating resource, is perhaps an unlikely candidate to have kick-started such a revolution but it will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the UK’s legal history.

    Those of you with more contemporary British legal experience will have a better handle on this but it sounds like the UK may be making not only access to information free but use of government data free. This would be sort of huge in that there are massive of mapping, statistical and scientific knowledge in the hands of the state as a consequence or even intentional result of public sector activity.

That is it – maybe more later.