Right On! Blog

Caught this poem on Boing Boing.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out for another is risk involvement.

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd Is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is To risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing dies nothing, Has nothing and is nothing.

They say they avoid suffering and sorrow, But they cannot learn, Feel, change, grow, love, feel.

Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves.

They have forfeited their freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.

– Anonymous

Picked off a neat comment on one of Andy Rooney’s recent commentaries.

I don’t think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America.

Four years later – too long by anyone’s account – we finally have a trial for a man (and woman) who murdered and chopped us their kid.  All that is in question is intent – did he mean to kill her?  Judging by the current trial so far, I’d say it’s an easy decision, simply by the m.o.

The court was told by the crown that when Khan was arrested, he told detectives his child had committed suicide by slitting her throat.

Anyone who slits a throat, in a fit of rage or not, fully intends to kill someone.  Beating someone with a shoe may not, but the clear act of a throat slit can only mean one thing: intent to cause immediate death.

Too bad we can’t hang people in this country.

:cp:

We’ve got driving in the snow problems here in Toronto, but none compared to this couple’s.

A Quebec man whose car was buried under two metres of snow in a Labrador blizzard says he had resigned himself to death in the darkness.

We’ve had quite the snowy and cold January so far…I’ll be glad to see it go.

A neat website that helps bypass annoying registrations of newspaper websites.

Via BoingBoing

It’s always seems easier to undo than do, especially when you’re swimming downstream with the special interest groups.  Letitbleed discusses the dilution of the College of Teachers.

Proving yet again that you can always count on Liberals to ask “how high?” when one of their pet special interest groups yells “Jump!”, there’s this charming little story in today’s Toronto Star:

Being a blue/white collar worker myself, I have to agree with this letter writer.

We have way too many university educated people who, at the end of the day, have no skills, just a degree.  The guy who came to fix my appliances told me he makes quite a bit more than his accountant wife, yet his company is always looking for good help.

A white-collar job is seen as superior to a blue-collar one. An academic university degree is seen as having a higher status than a more practical community college diploma, and a tradesperson’s skills are not afforded much status at all,

We need to tell those not set out for the books to get a trade – and that there is honor in that line of work.  They’ll make a lot more money than they otherwise would with a “BA” and society will be better for it as well.

The master Donato at it again.

:kr:

It’s always a terrible thing when a solider is killed, it’s even worse when he was due to come home.

A suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his chest jumped on a lightly armoured Iltis vehicle today and set off an explosion that killed a Canadian soldier and injured three of his comrades just as their tour of duty was nearing an end…”This act, reprehensible as it is, indicates essentially why you’re here. You’re here to protect these people from such animals as were involved in taking life of one of our own and injuring others.”

It’s time suicide bombing be declared a crime against humanity – sign the petition.

As we enter day 2 of the (media) storm from (hell), the media is having a field day trying to scare us witless.  Dunford has a column expressing the ridiculous nature of news and reporting.

STORM WATCH SIX! This is an official alert to Dangerous Weather Conditions from Environment Page Six. Not like last week’s Face-Freezes-and-Falls-Off. Not like Poor-Dog-Sticks-to-Sidewalk. Not like Can’t-Feel-Ears-Since-Day-Bus-Didn’t-Come. Different. A severe winter storm threatens Toronto, approaching southern Ontario from the central States. Snow heavy at times, accompanied by spinning Hondas.

Hitchins says that if beef was found to cause schizophrenia like cannabis has been linked to, then it would have been completely banned.  Western governments are moving the other way with cannabis, ironically.  Let’s see the effects on society in 50 years when all these reefer heads have had their full dose.

In fact, British governments have already panicked – in my view on scanty evidence – about beef. But they have also actively legalised cannabis, a powerful mind-bending drug which may well cause schizophrenia and can certainly trigger it where it is latent.

As much as I like to see suspects rounded up and jailed, the handling of the two teenage girls accused of murdering their mother a year ago seemed unnecessarily rough.

I am writing to to speak out about the appalling way the police conducted themselves in the arrest of these young women and what they endured that night. To be pulled out of their home, in the morning, in their pyjamas, in examination week at high school is cruel. These girls are not at risk of running. (Are they going to miss examinations because of this?)

As (illegal) bullets just miss innocent civilians…

Ronald was surfing the Internet when the bullet ripped through his bedroom wall. Without thinking, he dived for cover. Three minutes passed before he felt it was safe to call the police.

… the Fiberals are targetting innocent civilians. I guess they will never learn.

Also, the province will introduce, and enforce, more demanding regulations for the storing of guns, which falls under provincial jurisdiction, in gun clubs and gun shops to make it harder for criminals to obtain them through break-ins.

:kr:

Meanwhile, as we endure our third week of -10C highs, the local mega-windmill sits perfectly still.

This will help us how, exactly, in our looming electricity crunch?

The initial reviews of Belinda are not too good, to put it mildly.  Apparently her latest speech was a real, well, snoozer.  :doze:

She came. We saw. She did not conquer. For a while, it seemed as if Belinda Stronach just might make believers of the 1,350 Calgarians assembled at the Telus Convention Centre yesterday morning.