Stephen Harper has announced a National Day of Honour. Supposedly this is to honour those who fought and fell in Afghanistan. From various media reports it appears to be just another opportunity for prime minister Photo Op to appear to support the military without actually doing anything substantive.
Continue readingAuthor: Evilness
Evilness: Hubble oops….
I got tagged on Twitter to explain an apparent Hubble tracking error image. Since the explanation will take more than 140 characters, I’ve put it here. Image after the cut.
Continue readingEvilness: On Public Goods
I occasionally get what can best be described as evangelical libertarians following me or engaging with me on Twitter. Their fervour for their ideology borders on the same level as that of evangelical Christians to the point of denying any evidence to the contrary their beliefs. One case in point
Continue readingEvilness: Jon Lord Absentee Candidate Absentee Mayor?
So on my drive to work this morning I was listening to CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener when they interviewed Calgary Mayoral candidate Jon Lord. Now Jon’s a former alderman and MLA and has the dubious honour of being a Conservative candidate who’s lost an election to a Liberal in Alberta. Now
Continue readingEvilness: Prorogue time again.
So our Maximum Leader Stephen Harper had decided to hit the reset switch on parliament again. This time, despite the crowing on the internet, the timing is similar to prorogations done by other PM’s in the past. Yes some scandals are brewing, but proroguing Parliament isn’t really going to detract
Continue readingEvilness: IT’S GLORIOUS LEADER’S BIRTHDAY!
Somehow I ended up on the federal Conservative party’s email list. I would consider this a massive fail of their vaunted CIMS system since I’ve been a card-carrying New Democrat for years, but it does provide insight into the party and they reek of desperation so what the heck. The
Continue readingEvilness: On temporary foreign workers and the market.
The Harper Conservatives have recently announced minor changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program in response to some very public abuses of the program by banks and other large corporations. It would seem the Tories have discovered that Canadians displaced by TFWs still get to vote in elections, whereas
Continue readingEvilness: Home builders try to buy themselves a city council.
A local television station acquired a video secretly taped at a meeting of some of Calgary’s home builders. In it the builder speaking basically states how with the generous spread of campaign dollars, they have three councillors in their back pockets and are trying to get at least five more.
Continue readingEvilness: The Conservative’s Justin Problem
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, Justin Trudeau was elected leader of the federal Liberal Party. Not that big of a surprise really, but at least it wasn’t the coronation that Ignatieff received. So far this has proven to be a nightmare for the ruling
Continue readingEvilness: On randomness
In my travels on the interwebs, I often come across creationists who like to use the “randomness” argument against, well, non-creationism. The reality is that these people are really just showing their ignorance of science.
Continue readingEvilness: Some more astrophotos.
Over the past month I’ve acquired a new mount for my telescope, and also a new telescope. Now in addition to my 127mm (5″) Maksutov I also now have a 200mm (8″) Newtonian. The Newtonian is photographically quite fast so it provides a wider field of view than the Maksutov.
Continue readingEvilness: Solar storms
Some time ago I ended up on some email list of bloggers. This means I get a litany of emails from various media outlets asking me to review some book or what-have-you. Generally the topic is some crackpot theory or another (the Maya apocalypse has been a fairly constant theme
Continue readingEvilness: …but it’s my right to drive like a moron…
Earlier this week, the police forces of Alberta suggested that they should be allowed to impound cars of people who are excessively speeding (going more than 50+ km/h over the speed limit). Naturally those who routinely break the law by exceeding the posted speed limit (usually by 15-20+ km/h) were
Continue readingEvilness: Wow- those are a loooong way away…
About a week ago I took an an astrophoto of a galaxy cluster, those of you who know me on Facebook have already seen the shot (some possibly on Twitter as well). Though I provided some basic information about the photo, I didn’t really do much analysis of it. So
Continue readingEvilness: Fun with scammers
So I’m sitting at home today watching my toddler run around when the phone rings. I answer the phone and someone with a heavy Indian accent introduces himself as someone from technical support and calling me about my computer. Given that I haven’t called tech support about any of my
Continue readingEvilness: Giving your private info to the US government.
With the revelation that it was the Harper Conservatives and not the Liberals that were using a US company to phone voters during the last election one question remains unanswered. What information did the Conservatives give this company? This is important since US law requires US companies to provide their
Continue readingEvilness: Interesting…
Given the media feeding frenzy that is the robocall scandal, it is interesting to note the almost complete lack of Conbot commenters in the comment sections of the stories. This can mean a couple of things, first that the people that the Conservatives pay to troll through media comment sections
Continue readingEvilness: On Conservative Culture.
About a year ago back here I wrote about what appears to be the culture of lying and deceit that the Harper Conservatives seem to be embracing. Fast forward to now and the revelations that voter suppression tactics were actively used by the Conservative party during the last election show
Continue readingEvilness: Why bill C-30 will never work.
There is, rightly, much ado about the internet spying bill C-30 that is currently before the house. A bill so poorly written that the Harper Conservatives have sent it to committee for amendments before it has even reached second reading. There are several moral reasons why the inappropriately named "Protecting
Continue readingEvilness: Yet more Conservative Corruption.
CBC has broken a story about local municipalities donating money to the Alberta Progressive Conservative Pary. There are several aspects of this story that are truly depressing and scary.
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