Category: government

my bike was stolen

On By Rick McIn cycling, government, health & fitness, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I bought a new Hybrid at MEC. Within a week it was stolen.

Ghost Panamao X 3 Bicycle (Unisex) – CAD$725 (US$582)

Using the wifi at McDonald’s at 3611 17th-AVE SW Calgary, I’d locked it to a tree close to the busy road. Seemed a good idea at the time. Who’d cut that lock? It’s such a busy spot.

Police told me that homeless guys tend to hang out at McDonald’s. There were a number the night I was there.

Though seemingly hopeless, I filed an online Police report next day. I wanted the cops to know what bike was targeted where.

Immediately I got a phone call. They’d recovered my bike. Wow!

Actually, they called before seeing my report. A new Ghost (unusual brand) was spotted outside a Mac’s convenience store with no lock. The police took it when no owner could be located. (No doubt the thief fled the scene when he saw them.)

Knowing that only MEC sold Ghost, they stopped by the store to ask the manager about that particular serial number. He gave them my phone number.

I love the Calgary police now. 🙂

When I met the police to collect my bike those partners told me that they pick up about one stolen bike a week.

Thieves try to “change the appearance” of stolen bikes. In my case they took off the hybrid wheels and put on a pretty good set of (stolen) mountain bike wheels. They added two small lights. And took off my bell.

But a Ghost bike is pretty conspicuous. There aren’t many of them around yet.

I decided to buy a replacement set of Hybrid wheels. And put the mountain bike wheels on one of my mountain bikes. All in all, I’m pretty happy how things worked out.

And I’ll be much more careful with my good bike in future.

bait bike

Bait bikes won’t be coming to Calgary any time soon, according to city police, who now say there has been no progress on such a program since last summer when they were dealing with a spike in bicycle thefts.

It was nine months ago that Sgt. Katrina O’Reilly told Metro several departments within the police service were working on an in-house version of a program similar to those in other jurisdictions, which see GPS tracking devices hidden inside bicycles placed in public areas as “bait” for would-be thieves. …

Sgt. Katrina O’Reilly told Metro last summer there had been a “tremendous increase” in the number of bikes being stolen in break-and-enters, rather than from an outdoor rack or off the street. …

Bait bike idea shelved by Calgary police, cyclists frustrated with mass thefts

FOX news bad for America, bad for the GOP

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, product complaintsLeave a comment

JACK SHAFER, Politico’s senior media writer:

Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base.

This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about …

According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.

… the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them. …

… The median age of a Fox viewer is 68 … and its median age is rising. …

What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News

foxnews-bad-gop

why Muhammad Ali wouldn’t go to Vietnam in 1967

On By Rick McIn ethics, government, sport - pro1 Comment

Muhammad Ali:

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America.

And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father.

Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Poor little black people and babies and children and women. How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Muhammad Ali was right, in my opinion. One of the most famous athletes in America lived the courage of his convictions. Good for him.

FRONTLINE | Secrets, Politics and Torture

On By Rick McIn education, ethics, GOP USA, government, IslamLeave a comment

One of the many things that revolts me about the GW Bush years was their introduction of “enhanced interrogation techniques“.

A new documentary reminds us of American torture.

FRONTLINE investigates the fight over the CIA’s controversial “enhanced interrogation” methods, widely criticized as torture. Based on recently declassified documents and interviews with key political leaders and CIA insiders, filmmaker Michael Kirk investigates the secret history of what the CIA did — and whether it worked.


It didn’t work. It was torture. If another nation had used these techniques on Americans, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would have called it torture.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

You can watch the hour long documentary on PBS.

enhanced-interrogation-tech-2

Enhanced interrogation techniques … … methods included prolonged stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food and drink — as well as waterboarding, walling, nakedness, subjection to extreme cold, confinement in small coffin-like boxes, and repeated slapping or beating.

There were also cases of medically unnecessary forced rectal feeding (anal rape) and threats to harm family members. …

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. …

Why did GW Bush invade Iraq?

On By Rick McIn ethics, governmentLeave a comment

The hijackers in the September 11 attacks were 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda, and 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon.

So why did Bush evacuate 2 dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family from the United States the first few days following? (They were friends of the Bush family.)

Why did GW attack a completely different nation – Iraq?

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. He didn’t even like Osama bin Ladin.

Pretty much everyone (not angling to get a job on FOX News) agrees the War on Iraq was a mistake.

Former CIA Deputy Director and intelligence briefer Michael Morell recently admits Iraq WMD “intelligence” was a lie.

JAMES FALLOWS:

The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around. Paul Krugman is exactly right when he says:

The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that.

The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War

war in Iraq leadership

Trillions of dollars wasted. So many lives destroyed. These are the guys to blame. 😦

Iraq would have been better off with Saddam. The USA would be safer today if they had let the Iraqi people decide their own fate.

Ireland votes to approve Gay marriage

On By Rick McIn education, ethics, governmentLeave a comment

There are plenty of good arguments against the word “marriage” being used for same sex couples.

I respect those who feel that way. But this battle is pretty much over. If a nation as Catholic as Ireland votes this way, almost every nation will. Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993 and abortion remains prohibited except where the mother’s life is in danger.

The world reacts to Ireland backing same-sex marriage

the argument for Creationism

On By Rick McIn education, GOP USA, government1 Comment

A 2012 Gallup poll interviewed a random sample of 1,012 American adults, aged 18 and older. …

Forty six percent Americans believed in creationism, 32 percent believed in theistic evolution and 15 percent believed in evolution without any divine intervention. …

As an Agnostic, I believe creationism is wrong. Flabbergasted that so many thinking adults could overlook the inconsistencies between what their eyes see and the possibility that the Earth is only something less than 10,000yrs-old …

Click PLAY or watch a Creationism pitch on YouTube.

I agree with National Geographic.

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

nat-geo-cover-lge

An overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity.

Nearly every scientific society, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists, has issued statements rejecting intelligent design …

61% of Canadians believe that humans evolved from less advanced life forms, while 22% believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years …

According to a 2008 Norstat poll for NRK, 59% of the Norwegian population fully accept evolution, 24% somewhat agree with the theory, 4% somewhat disagree with the theory while 8% do not accept evolution. …

The US has one of the highest levels of public belief in biblical or other religious accounts of the origins of life on earth among industrialized countries. …

wikipedia

Of the 2016 Republican candidates for President, so far, Huckabee, Perry, Santorum and Ben Carson are creationists. None of the others will admit they believe in evolution. They try to duck the issue often claiming: “I’m not a scientist.”

The GOP is an anti-science Party. 😦

related – A Creationist Campaign – Louisiana students are suffering for Bobby Jindal’s presidential ambitions.

Click through to see Stephen Colbert’s hilarious slap down of Jindal’s creationist “retreat from knowledge”. 🙂

“leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows”

On By Rick McIn ethics, GOP USA, government, IslamLeave a comment

When Bill O’Reilly asked Lt. Col. Ralph Peters what his strategy would be to defeat the jihad, he said:

“You go wherever in the world the terrorists are and you kill them, you do your best to exterminate them, and then you leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows.”

FOX News

The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013. The U.S.-led coalition confirms that airstrikes were called in by international forces during the Afghan-led operation in a remote area of Kunar province near the Pakistan border. (AP Photo/Naimatullah Karyab)
The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013. The U.S.-led coalition confirms that airstrikes were called in by international forces during the Afghan-led operation in a remote area of Kunar province near the Pakistan border. (AP Photo/Naimatullah Karyab)

Scientific American – How Can We Condemn Boston Murders But Excuse U.S. Bombing of Civilians?

Though I totally disagree with Ralph Peters, I respect his honesty. He admits innocents will be killed.

IF the USA wants to fight terrorists overseas, with drones or smart bombs, that’s probably the best way. Boots on the ground is the worst way.

Instead, foreign nations should isolate Islamic nations. Close embassies. Enforce boycotts. Freeze bank assets. Stop giving them an excuse for terrorism.

If you leave Islamic hotheads alone, it won’t be long before they are fighting each other.

Homeland security should be security within your own borders.

India hates tourists … less

On By Rick McIn economics, government, product complaints, travel, travel IndiaLeave a comment

New. Announced November 2014 for tourists wanting to travel to India.

e-Tourist Visa. Online. US$60. Good for 1 month. Single entry.

Here’s the application page (I hope). I’ll try it for a trip September 2015. Wish me luck.

Original post from 2014 ____

I’m in Nepal. Visa on arrival. No hassles. Nepal loves tourists.

India still requires a visa in advance for Canadians, a stupid and time consuming process from the days of the Raj.

Though open-for-business Modi promised Obama it was coming, it’s not yet here.

Modi

India is working on a proposal for visa on arrival (VoA) facility for US tourists, one of the big-ticket announcements expected to be made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile visit to the US beginning September 26. …

Times of India

Since 2010 visa on arrival was available for citizens of these nations: Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia and South Korea.

Yet they cannot bloody add more nations to that list? 😦

UPDATE – The list has been expanded to 43 nations including the USA. … But NOT Canada. NOT U.K.

related – India hates tourists (2013)

What Young Kids Do With Guns When Parents Aren’t Around

On By Rick McIn ethics, firearms, GOP USA, government3 Comments

3yr-old shoots and kills 1yr-old sister. 😦

I see stories like this at least once a week.

No word yet whether the parents will be charged. I believe they should.

An experiment run by an Eckerd College professor … for ABC’s 20/20 on children and guns …

Doctor Marjorie Sanfilippo specializes in child psychology and her curiosity turned her to what children would do when adults are not around and they were told to not play with a clearly visible gun. …

Almost every kid went for the guns, waved them around and even pointed them at each other. …

Click PLAY or watch ABC News 20/20’s Young Guns on YouTube.

Gundamentalist National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent denies American statistics that there were at least 88 incidents just this year “in which a child 17 or under fired a gun unintentionally and someone was harmed as a result” …