*yawn* >stretch< mmm... coffee...
Okee dokee... back to normal, disfunctional reality. Ever been asked to mediate a stalemated US-China trade dispute between two peanut players both of whom want to sound like they represent a bigger share of their national self interest than the leaders in their respective capitals could possibly given a damn about where the only solution was to initiate a sake shooting contest? Not me, but seriously, how doomed does the planet have to be when a Canadian is considered by two super-power brats to be the consultant with the big-world picture?
Anyway, as stated earlier in less than eloquent terms, I got about 2/3 of the way through the act, and gave up. It's a mess, with committeeized big-city never-seen-the-stars finger prints all over it. It's counter productive, and now I'm nervous for the safety and utility my tools represent.
So... *sigh*... I hate hate hate the "political process", but it can't sit there the way it is.
Of course, the simple thing would be to scrap it, which I bet is what will happen because any more would require Harper to delegate some neurons to thinking about something other than how he's going to organize a scare-campaign freaking people into thinking their only options in the next election will be either a majority conservative government or a liberal-NDP coalition with BQ complicity, without anyone noticing that the latter is exactly the option that exists now, and without anyone noticing that he didn't mention the option of a liberal majority, however I can see why cops like the registry, and I bet they're the first ones to see the potentially dangerous flaws in it, and my hunch is they're currently choosing not to seriously enforce the bad parts for no other reason than because they're not in a bad mood, so if we grant that it might be good for society as a whole to figure out a way to keep the parts that work, how should a registry work?
So, for starters, anybody got a problem with all legitimately owned weapons being chipped? It would be like a permanent license-plate drilled into the stock of old weapons, and embedded into the triggering mechanism or firing pin mechanism of new weapons.
If people can live with that, then what information should be in a registry database to link the weapon to an owner. I'm thinking bare-bones, i.e. some details about the weapon to make sure the chip hasn't been ported from a different weapon, plus name, and date of birth (although that doesn't always work, because my brother got busted for something he didn't do, and it turned out there was another person with exactly the same name, including middle name, *and* the same date of birth, such that they had to go back to school records and have him say the names of his elementary school teachers to be let go).
How does that sit with everyone? What information should be in the registry database?
PS - last night I was being a dick pestering people to see if they knew the two things that stand out about Canada in the eyes of the rest of the world.
The answers are:
1) Canadians have a reputation for being well educated by global standards. Most Canadians can tell you how many times the world goes around the sun in a year, and who we were fighting in the second world war, when up to 30% of people in some US states cannot. (For that matter, the most educated city is Calgary; lots of those guys driving around in pickups wearing baseball caps have at least bachelor's degrees.)
2) Other nation's leaders are amazed by the efficiency of our police.
Okee dokee... back to normal, disfunctional reality. Ever been asked to mediate a stalemated US-China trade dispute between two peanut players both of whom want to sound like they represent a bigger share of their national self interest than the leaders in their respective capitals could possibly given a damn about where the only solution was to initiate a sake shooting contest? Not me, but seriously, how doomed does the planet have to be when a Canadian is considered by two super-power brats to be the consultant with the big-world picture?
Anyway, as stated earlier in less than eloquent terms, I got about 2/3 of the way through the act, and gave up. It's a mess, with committeeized big-city never-seen-the-stars finger prints all over it. It's counter productive, and now I'm nervous for the safety and utility my tools represent.
So... *sigh*... I hate hate hate the "political process", but it can't sit there the way it is.
Of course, the simple thing would be to scrap it, which I bet is what will happen because any more would require Harper to delegate some neurons to thinking about something other than how he's going to organize a scare-campaign freaking people into thinking their only options in the next election will be either a majority conservative government or a liberal-NDP coalition with BQ complicity, without anyone noticing that the latter is exactly the option that exists now, and without anyone noticing that he didn't mention the option of a liberal majority, however I can see why cops like the registry, and I bet they're the first ones to see the potentially dangerous flaws in it, and my hunch is they're currently choosing not to seriously enforce the bad parts for no other reason than because they're not in a bad mood, so if we grant that it might be good for society as a whole to figure out a way to keep the parts that work, how should a registry work?
So, for starters, anybody got a problem with all legitimately owned weapons being chipped? It would be like a permanent license-plate drilled into the stock of old weapons, and embedded into the triggering mechanism or firing pin mechanism of new weapons.
If people can live with that, then what information should be in a registry database to link the weapon to an owner. I'm thinking bare-bones, i.e. some details about the weapon to make sure the chip hasn't been ported from a different weapon, plus name, and date of birth (although that doesn't always work, because my brother got busted for something he didn't do, and it turned out there was another person with exactly the same name, including middle name, *and* the same date of birth, such that they had to go back to school records and have him say the names of his elementary school teachers to be let go).
How does that sit with everyone? What information should be in the registry database?
PS - last night I was being a dick pestering people to see if they knew the two things that stand out about Canada in the eyes of the rest of the world.
The answers are:
1) Canadians have a reputation for being well educated by global standards. Most Canadians can tell you how many times the world goes around the sun in a year, and who we were fighting in the second world war, when up to 30% of people in some US states cannot. (For that matter, the most educated city is Calgary; lots of those guys driving around in pickups wearing baseball caps have at least bachelor's degrees.)
2) Other nation's leaders are amazed by the efficiency of our police.
Last edited:
