This September I became one of the sponsors for the youth group at my church (Pioneer Park Christian Fellowship in Kitchener, Ontario). This past summer, I had told one of the previous sponsors, my friend David Sararus, that I would like to become involved with the youth because David and his wife, Juanita Laverty (also a friend) were going to be moving to Indiana to attend Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and they (obviously) wouldn't be able to continue being sponsors.

I'm not sure why I volunteered to do this, just that it felt like I should. Maybe it was God calling me to do this — I don't know.

There are three other sponsors so it's not like I'm flailing around on my own, not knowing what to do. And the kids are great — I like them and I'm hoping that they like me. :-)

This past weekend was the Mennonite Church of Eastern Canada youth exchange weekend and on the drive to our host church (Living Water Community Christian Fellowship, New Hamburg, Ontario), remembering what these weekends had been like when I had been in youth group fifteen(ack!)-plus years ago, In I started to wonder just what the heck I have gotten myself in for? But you know what? It was fun! Yes, I only got 5 hours of sleep Friday night and yes, I wasn't all that thrilled about not being able to have a shower Saturday morning because we slept at the church, but all in all the experience as a sponsor was not all that different from my long ago days as a teenager. Fun games, a thought provoking speaker and (even though I am not fully comfortable with the more charismatic style) great worship with the 8 teens from PPCF, the 30+ teens from Living Waters and the 15+ teens of the second visiting youth group from East Zorra Mennonite Church in Tavistock.

I can only hope that my being a sponsor will be as meaningful for these kids as I know it will be for me, and look forward to doing this for a good long while.

And yet another letter of mine was printed in The Record's opinion pages yesterday. I wonder if I can get frequent flyer miles for all of them? :-) This one was about my experience as a deputy returning officer for a poll in the recent Ontario provincial election.

Low turnout in election is a deep concern

I'm not sure what to think of the results of the Ontario election on Oct. 2. I voted Green but I think that the Liberals are an acceptable replacement to the Tories, who I disliked.

What bothers me, however, is the lack of voter turnout. I was a deputy returning officer for a poll, and at 5 p.m. I was wondering if even 20 per cent of the voters would show up. The poll next to us had had twice as many people by that point. At 8 p.m., when the polls closed, I did my duty as a returning officer and counted all the ballots. Total turnout for my poll was 39 per cent and I went home disappointed but hoping that this was an anomaly.

As I flicked past the post-election analysis, I came across a station whose talking heads were estimating a 48 per cent turnout based on the polls so far reporting. Less than half the electorate turning out for the vote is not just terrible, it is shameful.

Bill Hurst said in his letter to the editor on Sept. 23 that he wasn't going to vote because he doesn't like the way in which we choose our elected officials. To me, a reason like that is just an excuse to deny being lazy. If Hurst truly wanted change, he should participate by either refusing or spoiling his ballot. If significant numbers of people did that, the politicians would take notice.

People who don't vote lose the right to complain about the process or the new government. After all, if they don't like it, why didn't they participate?

If you didn't vote or you didn't refuse or spoil your ballot, don't come complaining to me when something about the government bothers you. I'll just do my best to make sure that when I say "Oh, poor baby" that it is only midly condescending.

For those of you who are interested, these are what the desktops for my two machines Fenris and Bytor look like.

Fenris runs Windows .NET 2003 Standard Server RC#2 all gussied up to look like Windows XP. (Normally Win2K3 it looks like the old Windows 2000 style.) The desktop is 1152x864, and the programmes running when I took this snapshot were Netscape, News Xpress and TeraTerm SSH.

Bytor run OpenBSD-current (as of 2003/09/28). I use WindowMaker as my window manager for X11R6 in 800x600 mode. The programmes running at the time of the snapshot were WTerm and GKrellM along with iconised The GIMP, XConsole and ASClock.

The saying used to be "If you had an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of typewriters, they would eventually produce all the works of Shakespeare". Well, that's changed, thanks to the monkeys at Primate Programming™ Inc.. Now, with just a on-infinite number of apes and a bunch of computers you can outsource the production of software tailored to the needs of your organization. And who knows — maybe you'll even get something as good as all the works of the Microsoft Windows programmers.

Open source software — gotta love it. Sometimes, though, I think it's more like "gotta love to hate it". Now don't get me wrong — my other computer (Bytor) runs OpenBSD and I love it. On Bytor I have my development webserver, my mail server(s), a DNS server, a FTP server and my archive directory of almost everything I've ever downloaded, as well as all the home directories for every account on my Windows machine.

I spent this past week upgrading Bytor from version OpenBSD-3.3 to OpenBSD-current in order to take advantage of the latest patches and upgrades made to not only the OS but also any packages I have installed. Part of the reason I spent most of the week upgrading Bytor is because I am behind a normal phoneline, so downloading takes forever. But that wasn't the only reason it took me all week. The major problem with open source, IMNSHO, is documentation or lack thereof. Few programmers like writing documentation and as a result few open source programmes have the amount of documentation that commercial software has.

In my professional opinion as a freelance computer consultant, OpenBSD is simply the best, most reliable and certainly the most secure of all the free un*xes out there. If an organization wants to host their own website, whether it is for only internal use or to be shared with the 'Net, I tell them to take one of their older server or desktop machines and load OpenBSD onto it, add Caucho Resin and MySQL and it will be competitive with a new Windows machine that is twice as fast and has twice the memory, if not better. And for $0 too, compared with potentially $3000 for a new machine plus Windows. That same OpenBSD machine could also be their corporate mail server, and the firewall for their entire office network if they wanted security.

But in spite of this glowing performace report, OpenBSD has less documentation for it than un*xes like FreeBSD or the various flavours of Linux (RedHat, Debian, Mandrake, etc...). It is not really for the casual office or home user, and even for a geek like me it's much better as a server than as a desktop. After you factor ot slow download times via modem, the reason it took me a week to upgrade Bytor was because every time but one I came up against a problem I couldn't find the answer on the OpenBSD site.I had to go search the 'Net and dig through reams of archived mailing list posts to find an answer, and about half the time I had to adapt from answers to similar problems on FreeBSD or NetBSD.

A few years ago in a newsgroup, I posted my opinion that OpenBSD is destined to remain on the margins unless good documentation was produced, and Theo deRaadt (the original force behind OpenBSD) got rather annoyed at me for saying that. At the time I volunteered to produce or coordinate a comprehensive "OpenBSD HandBook" formatted like the FreeBSD Handbook, and I asked how would be the best way to go about getting significant documentation like that started and put on to the OpenBSD website. Except I got no answers, not evan a "So-and-so manages the website, talk to him". When I asked for pointers or URLs on how to go about writing device drivers for OpenBSD, all I got was "RTFM you idiot" Unfortunately there was no (f***ing) manual for OpenBSD device drivers to read, and reading the poorly commented code that was part of the OpenBSD sources helps only if you already know what you are doing. That's when I made my comment about marginalization and then Theo got mad at me (and it made me see why some people call him arrogant). While there are a few more docs on the OpenBSD website 3 years later, it still doesn't approach the level of the FreeBSD Handbook or everything available for Linux. And that's a shame, because OpenBSD is the best free un*x out there.

Here is the letter to the editor form Henry Brunsveld to which mine was a response:

Gay equation is wrong

Besides getting his facts about the Bible wrong (the Bible does condemn sexual relations between women -- read Romans 1:26), Corey Schlueter's June 21 letter stated that homosexuality cannot be equated with, among other things, pedophilia. His reason is that homosexuality is legal, whereas pedophilia is not.

In fact, there are many similarities between the two. Like pedophilia, homosexual behaviour was once illegal. Like homosexuals, pedophiles comprise a tiny percentage of the population, and are able to live otherwise normal lives, coming from all walks of life. Most people seem to think pedophiles can't change, like homosexuals.

One of the major factors in conditioning people to accept homosexual behaviour as normal was the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders. At a symposium on May 19 in San Francisco, sponsored by the APA, some psychiatrists proposed removing pedophilia from the manual.

Our courts will have no problem in changing our laws to make pedophilia legal and grant pedophiles the same rights homosexuals have.

They won't even have to change the definition of "sexual orientation," since it is nowhere defined in our laws.

If pedophilia becomes legal, will that make it right?

Henry Brunsveld, RR 2 Puslinch

Yesterday my local newspaper, The Record, printed yet another of my letters to the editor. Perhaps I should write a book? :-) Anyways, it was once more on the topic of same sex marriages. This is a majorly hot topic, because the letters to the editor have just not stopped coming in! Ot's also a hot topic in the constituency of he mennonite Churche of Canada. Last week was MC Canada's General Meeting in St. Catharines, ON there was a resolution put forward on the same-sex marriage issue. The resulution was this:

Since we believe that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman in a life-long covenant of love, and

Since the Prime Minister has indicated his intention to have the Federal Government redefine marriage in future legislation,

Be it resolved that the General Board communicate to the Federal Government Mennonite Church Canada’s understanding of marriage and our encouragement that, whatever action the Government should take to redefine marriage, all religious groups be guaranteed the freedom to practice and proclaim their understanding of what marriage is.

People got up and commented from various sides of his debate — people who were "out of the closet" wanting to vote No for this resolution and people who wanted it to be strengthened from simply advocating for religious freedom for churches to having MC Canada to explicitly lobbying against same-sex marriages. One opinion expressed was that it was already over and done with because MC Canada (and it's predecessors) had already made a statement on this issue in years past.

It was asked that this resolution be voted on by secret ballot, rather than by the usual show of hands, and I think that is a good idea. To do it publicly would have made many people feel very uncomfortable about showing what their true feelings are on this cointentious subject. But when it came time for the moderator to announce the results, he merely said that the motion was carried. I know that annoyed me, and it must have bothered otehr people as well, because he eventually announced the results. When he sauid that the count had been 131 for, 130 against and 16 spoiled ballots, the audience reacte dnoticibly with "oohs" and "oh mys" all over the place. Clearly the issue is not over and done with!

Anyways, here is my letter to the editor, with typos corrected. I will try to find the original letter to which this is a response and enter it here.

Put love in same-sex case

Henry Brunsveld, in his letter to the editor on July 7, has got it all wrong when he tries to compare homosexuality with pedophilia, and I feel that it is dishonest of him to imply that homosexuals are child molesters.

When an adult attempts to entice or coerce a child into having sex, that harms the child, no two ways about it. The child suffers from the physical abuse at the time of the sexual encounter and from mental and emotional hardships as he or she deals with the ordeal.

When two consenting adult men or adult women choose to have sex with each other, they are not harming anybody. At most, they might have the same regrets that those of [us] who are heterosexual might have.

Brunsveld is right when he says that homosexuality as a mental disorder was removed from the accepted manuals in 1973, and this was done based on overwhelming empirical evidence.

For me, the underpinning of Jesus' teachings is "Love your neighbour as yourself" from the parable of the Good Samaritan. It saddens me that I see no love in all the letters to the editor written by so many professed Christians.

Cory Albrecht, Kitchener

If you're ever going to grow anything like spearmint or peppermint, do yourself a favour and grow it in a pot. The word "invasive" is a little bit on the light side for some mints. I have heard it said "the only two things that could survive worldwide nuclear war are cockroaches and mint".

About 6 or so years ago I got a small spearmint plant when I started container gardening, and on my Mother's suggestion in the fall I transplanted it to one of the flower beds right next to the deck. The next spring it grew well and I was delighted, since I like mint teas, except it did more than merely "grow well". It sent out roots and shoots all around itself, spreading quite fast. So I transplanted it from the flower bed to the eastern side of the house, but it had sent roots underneath the deck where we couldn't dig them up and it was 2 or 3 years until we stopped finding spearmint shoots to pull up. And on the side of the house, well, I can no longer tell where I originally transplanted it to because it has almost taken over that flower bed. Good thing the chrysanthemums and the lamb's ear (another member of the mint family) are hardy plants.

Anyways, what got me on to this was that today was harvest time for some of my herbs. I cut off large amounts of bergamot, spearmint and fennel, as well as a little bit of rosemary. The only reason I didn't harvest my peppermint, catnip and lemon balm was because I ran out of space on the dining room table for drying them out. :-) As you can tell, what I grow in my containers are mostly plants of the mint family — catnip, lemon balm, peppermint, orange mint bergamot, spearmint, pineapple mint, grapefruit mint, greek oregano, english lavender and persian catmint. But I also have cherry tomatoes, cubanelle, hungarian wax, purple bell and hot cherry peppers, ginger, chives, onion, garlic, fennel, chamomile, bloody sorrel and a licorice plant.

Some day I would love to have big garden instead of just containers out on the deck and the occasional plant in my Mother's flower beds.

Today, in my local newspaper there was response to my recent letter to the editor on the subject of same sex marriages. Lo and behold, it was written by somebody who goes to the same church as I! Here is the text of Dawn's letter as published:

Do not call it marriage

This is in response to the June 14 letter written by Cory Albrecht: Welcome Gay Marriages.

I don't hate gay people; I know some and they are people just like the rest of us. They deserve happiness just like we do and if they find it in this lifestyle, then that's their choice.

But I can make choices, too. My choices are to not choose that as my lifestyle and please do not call it a marriage. What the judges say and what the marriage licence says is up to them. But what I believe in and how I live my life according to the morals I was taught is up to me.

I don't care how society changes. I don't have to change and neither do the gay people. But please don't expect me and many others to live and believe as they do. I accept this. The same-sex marriage issue is getting far too much publicity and who is benefiting from it?

I accept any race, colour and person for who they are. But when Albrecht asks what is the difference between an interracial marriage and a same-sex marriage, there are lots. But the main one is that interracial marriages are between a male and a female. Same-sex marriages are not. Please call it a union, not a marriage.

Dawn Rees, Kitchener

Dawn talks about homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice", but I don't see it that way. I know that as a heterosexual man I did not chose to be attracted most to certain types of women — it is simply whom I am naturally, normally attracted to. From that I can easily generalize to a gay person not having chosen to be homosexual. After all, who would willingly chose to have so much prejudice and bigotry heaped upon them?

Yesterday my local newspaper, The Record, printed another of my letters to the editor. This one wasn't in response to somebody else's letter, but my comments on the recent court ruling on same sex marriages. The letter as printed follows:

Welcome gay marriages

With the debate on homosexual marriage about to ratchet up a notch, I would like to offer an analogy.

If we were to look at common opinions on interracial marriages a few generations ago, what would we see? Most people would have disapproved of a white person marrying a black person, with some people engaging in slander and violence. Many white parents would have been shocked at their daughter for wanting to engage in miscegenation and some priests and ministers refused to perform the ceremonies. Nor was the use of scientific arguments against interracial marriage limited to Germany in the 1930s. While race was not as big an issue here in Canada as in the United States, these attitudes still existed.

If somebody were to speak out against interracial marriage today, we would call them bigoted. "Love is colour-blind," we would say.

So what is the difference between interracial marriage and same sex marriage? None that I can see, and if I ever know a homosexual couple who get married I will be just as delighted for them as I would be for any other couple. Shouldn't we all?

Me, I just can't understand why somebody would want to prevent twp people who love each other from getting married. I don't see how same sex marriage harms anybody, not even those nitwits who think that gay people are out to "convert" (pfft!) them or their children.

Sometimes, when my intolerance for intolerance (yes, ironic, I know) overwhelms my compassion I wish that every person who is against same sex marriage would have a close friend or family member come out of the closet. Perhaps then the anti-gay people, as they see directly the effects of intolerance, would realize that homosexual people are just that – people. Hopefully they would develop some true compassion. The thing is, even though I am pro-gay rights and do not feel that it is sinful at all (I apply the same standards re sexual fidelity, etc.. to straights & gays), I would never wish it up on a person to have to endure the intolerance and abuse that openly homosexual people suffer.Thus my wish will be for naught.

Well, I have got to remember not to take too long a break in the middle of biking. :-)

During my usual Iron Horse Trail bike ride today I saw some poppies growing in the bush alongside the trail. At least I thought they were poppies but I wasn't sure. They were growing in the bush that surrounds the trail at some spots, far enough in that I was sure they weren't in one of the many yards that back on to the trail.

I stopped and picked a flower and on the way home I stopped at the school where my Mother works, since she's a gardener-type person and would be able to confirm that it was a poppy. But unfortunately I stopped too long at the school, and if you start up again when your body thinks it is winding down from excersising, it can be even harder to go. Bleh.

Got some more plants (again) today. Some Hungarian wax hot peppers and a nice tall foxglove to put beside the butterfly bush to help attract even more butterflys. But what I'm really hoping (almost against hope) is that some hummingbirds will show up. When I was children's camp counsellor for my summer job as a teenager, I remember seeing the hummingbirds feed on the flowers of the the taller plants. But I have never seen them here in the city. :-(

Well, today (Saturday) I got some more plants for my container gardening.

In the vegetable category I got jalapeño peppers, hot cherry peppers and one purple bell (sweet) pepper. Hopefully the hot cherry peppers wont look too much like the cherry tomatoes I got a few weeks earlier! :-) Last summer the peppers I grew almost produced more than I could use, and I just noticed on the tag that the hot cherry peppers are "heavy producers"!

In the herbs and spices category I got Virginia mint, German chamomile, bloody sorrel, ginger, licorice, bergamot and orange mint (a peppermint cultivar). These will go along with the peppermint, catnip, and fennel I got a few weeks ago. Bergamot and bee balm are both Monarda spp., but last summer when I tried adding a few bee balm leaves to my home-grown teas for an Earl Grey-like taste it wasn't overly yummy. The Virginia mint is described as being "well behaved", so I guess that means it won't take over like spearmint or peppermint. Perhaps I will be able to put it in a flowerbed for next year.

To go int the new flower bed around the bird feeder pole I got some marjoram, creeping oregano and some french thyme. Depending on how well they grow (getting trampled on by the mourning doves and other birds chasing fallen birdseed) I might harvest these for spices later on.

And the bee balm which got planted from its pot to a flower bed last fall is doing wonderfully, but the butterfly bush which also got planted out did not survive the winter. :-( But I got another one a few weeks ago, and hopefully it will survive the winter better if it is in the flowerbed all summer.

I recently found a a piece of parasite software on my system, thanks to the terrible security of Windows. :-P Fortunately I am a fairly savvy conputer user, knowing a fair bit about the internals of Windows so I could remove this annoying piece of *#!!* software — though it was damn tricky finding every place it hid itself and its data. I'm still not sure I zapped all of it. :-P

Parasite software is usually spyware. It scans your harddrive for personal information (address, credit card numbers, etc...) and keeps records of every site you visit, sending that data somewhere, usually to some company who will sell that info to third parties. Parasite software doesn't show up in the Add/Remove programmes control panel which means to uninstall it you have to know what files it secretly installed in the first place, and even if you can hunt down and find all those well hidden files, if you don't get every last one they can redownload and reinstall themselves the next time you go online. This is scary stuff - programmes that can't be deleted that spy on everything you're doing on your computer and send the info God knows where!

So I did a little bit of research in to parasite-ware and spyware and I found two webpages which are very useful. The first one (http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/) has a little script on it to detect whether your computer has any of about ~100 different pieces of spyware as well as instructions on how to get rid of any that are found. The second (http://www.unwantedlinks.com/spyware-info.htm) has a good explanation (even for non-geeks) of what parasite spyware does and a link to a list of about 800 programmes that secretly install this crap.

I recommend that everybody who uses Windows on their computer visit that page (with Internet Explorer, not Netscape, Opera or a different browser) because these parasitical spyware programmes are NOT not detected by anti-virus software! The annoying parasites are usually secretly bundled in with free softare people download from the next (Grokster, BonziBuddy, Kazaa, LimeWire, AudioGalaxy, CuteFTP are some examples of the more popular ones), but some webpages secretly install parasite software when you surf to them.

Also, a very popular program called Gator, which is advertised a personal utility program that helps you manage personal information (name, birthday, address), bank account information, credit card numbers, passwords and so forth. It's major feature is to automatically fill out forms on web pages with that personal info — which sounds cool ("hey, less typing!"), untill you realize that Gator also sends that info of yours back to it's creators for them to sell to third parties! Not only that, but Gator is also "theftware", which means that when you are surfing, Gator scans all the web pages you visit for ads and switches them for ads of Gator's clients. On the surface this doens't sound too bad - and ad is an ad, right? Wrong! Most of those webpages have those adds to generate revenue so the people can keep their pages online. But since Gator is secretly replacing those ads with ones from Gator clients, the people don't get the revenue they deserve. Gator is extremely unethical.

Since my Mother swears by what banana skins have done for her ferns, I've deced to try them for my container gardening this year. Bananas have high levels of phosporus and potassium and along with nitrogen are the three elements most rapidly removed from soil.

If I remember my biology from high school and my zoology & botany from university, phosphorus is essential for both photosynthesis in plants and cellular respiration in animals. Unfortunately I can't remember what the potassium is needed for.

In years past I've always used Miracle Gro (that blue, crystalline fertlizer) on my plants and they have done nicely. So this summer I shall see if the banana skins make my container gardened plants any healthier. I have the biggest hopes for the tomatoes and peppers. Come winter when I bring my orange tree inside I'm going to give it banana skins, too, and maybe it will stay healthier all winter.

While I've never had bad luck with the tomatoes and peppers, they've always been under–performers for me, especially the tomatoes. My herbs have always done well with mild neglect, getting nice and bushy, so I guess a combination of that and not being as experienced a gardener as my Mother has not let my tomatoes and peppers grow to their potential.

Last Saturday at the farmers' market, in addition to some catnip and lemon balm, I picked up two little cherry tomato plants with flower buds already on them. (Not having a driver's licence sucks, so I don't usually get plants until June when I go along with my Mother the teacher on her garden shopping trips when school has ended.) I gave the plants some banana skins today and I am hoping that some early cherry tomatoes from healthy, banana–fed plants will encourage me to be more attentive to the plants that need more than the mild neglect I give my herbs. :-)

Well, I got another letter to the editor printed in my local newspaper (The Record). It was about bilingualism in response to somebody that I saw as being prejudiced and anti–francophone. Since the Record has recently gone non-free :-( on it's website, here are both letters for you to read and make your own choice.

Ottawa is wasteful, 29 April 2003

Our Canadian dictator and his loyal followers have done it to us again. The millions needed for housing, health, education and a great many other subjects are to be wasted, with the help of Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, on divisive, useless, unneeded bilingualism.

It always amazes me how Prime Minister Jean Chr�tien can come up with dreams like this, especially at a time of war when the United States needs our assistance. Even the military is neglected when urgently needed.

What we have now with no real opposition is sad.

William White, Kitchener

---

Yea for bilingualism, 5 May 2003

I fail to see how bilingualism is "divisive, useless, unneeded," as characterized by William White in his April 29 letter, Ottawa is Wasteful.

White comes across as one of those anglophones who complains that they were forced to take French in public school yet still expect francophones to learn English. Were I a francophone, that kind of attitude would annoy me to no end.

Why should a francophone have to learn English if the anglophones aren't going to make a similar attempt to learn French?

Nor does it help White's argument that he comes out of the gate with an attack on Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Perhaps White missed the last few decades of democratic elections in this country?

Bilingualism is a good thing and not just because of the benefits of learning any second language.

French-English bilingualism programs here in Canada are great things.

When I took French in public school and university, I learned a little bit about francophone-Canadian culture and if you remember the Canadian history course from high school, then it is easy to understand a little bit about what causes the feelings that fuel the separatist movement.

Bilingualism programs go a long way towards healing that rift.

J'espère qu'à l'avenir pour tous les étudiants Canadiens que l'immersion de langue sera la norme, plutôt que l'exception. Bravo pour le bilinguisme.

Cory C. Albrecht, Kitchener

I finally got my bicyle out of the basement and I biked over to the nearest gas station to fill the tires, and you'd never guess what I saw.

A Pileated Woodpecker! Now these things aren't that common, so I almost fell off my bike when I saw it! The last (and only other) time I had seen one was about 15 years ago in Point Pelee National Park and it was on the list of uncommon and rarer birds that if you saw one you were supposed to find one of the staff and tell them.

I live in suburban Kitchener, and there is a small (one block square) woods just down the street and about a 15 minute walk in the other direction is Steckle's Woods — a fair–sized bush for being in the middle of the city. I saw the Pileated Woodpecker on one of the trees in the front lawn of a house which backs onto the main road which separates my subdivision from Steckle's Woods. But still, you don't expect to see a bird like this in the middle of the city.

I guess I'm going to have to take my camera and telephoto lens into the woods to see if I can capture this bird on film. Way cool experience!

Well, Blogger, ain't perfect. The so-called "bloggerTags" could be a bit more flexible, and the template update pages need to be re-written so they can recognize when they are receiving UTF-7. It was a pain in the rear end to have to figure out why things like <$BlogItemAuthor$> were showing up on my blog page. :-P

But it works okay once you learn to accomodate its weaknesses and it is kinda neat. I think I shall keep on using it for now - at least until I feel the urge two write my own CGIs to do all this. :-)

Here is the text of a Second Opinion article of mine (basically, an extra long letter to the editor) that appeared in October 2001 in my local news paper, The Record. little over a year later, this article seems especially topical to me.

I must strongly disagree with Amy Moses who wote in a letter to the editor on Saturday, September 22 that U.S. policy is not to blame for being one of the root causes of terrorist actions. U.S. foreign policy is to blame, at least partially, as is Canadian foreign policy and polices of all the rich Western nations.

As a group, we in the Western world have not treated the rest of the people on this planet very kindly or respectfully. It started with traditional colonialism by the European powers a few centuries back and turned in the economic colonialism of today.

During colonial times the indigenous peoples in colonised lands were at best viewed as ignorant savages who only needed to be educated in the proper civilised European way of doing things — a form of racism. At worst the natural resources of their lands were taken without recompense and they were turned into slaves.

We Westerners wanted our clothes and shoes at cheaper and cheaper prices, so we set up sweatshops in Third World countries, making the employees work brutally long shifts with no breaks for wages less than what they needed to support their families. We wanted our bananas and coffee cheaply, too, so we set up plantations which again payed the workers unfairly low wages, sometimes less than what the plantation owners charged for rent of the slums on plantation property.

We used their countries as pawns and proxies during the Cold War, sending billions of dollars for weaponry to governments whom we knew were corrupt and just as likely to turn those weapons on their own citizens as well as their enemies. We set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ostensibly to help Third World nations buy food or improve their infrastructures, and they are forced to pay these "preferred creditors" in full, on time and without any possibility of relief. These institutions have refused to write off bad debts and have chosen instead to extend more credit, driving poor countries deeper and deeper into debt.

Is it any wonder that people in these nations are so resentful of the Western World? The situation forced upon Germany after it lost World War I produced a fertile ground for the seeds of hatred spread by the Nazi Party and resulted in World War II. Similarly, the actions of we rich Western countries have produced a fertile ground or the seeds spread by Osama Bin Laden and others like him. Similarly, blaming all of Islam for terrorist attacks is an act of bigotry that will only make resentful people even more resentful and give credence in their minds to Bin Laden's claim of a Christian-Jewish crusade against the Muslim world.

The attacks in Washington D.C. and New York City were terrible tragedies and cannot be condoned. Justice must happen and it must be appropriate justice, not revenge. However, the only way that we can truly get rid of terrorism is by getting rid of the global inequities and injustices that helped to spawn it. Bombing countries that support terrorists might get rid of individuals like Bin Laden, but then again it might not. It's a chancy thing that doesn't seem to have made Saddam Hussein a fan of the West. What military action will produce is more resentment and hatred of the West in innocent people, giving those people stronger reasons to follow the next Bin Laden that comes along.

Well, as I read through rec.arts.startrek.* and all the posts that seem to have degenerated into a discussion on politics and Iraq, I remember my thoughts on the whole thing before the UN inspection teams ent to Iraq this time.

If the teams found anything, then George W Bush would appear on TV saying "See? I told you they had this stuff! Now we have to go in and remove Saddam!"

If the teams found nothing, then President Bush would appear on TV saying "See? I told you they wouldn't cooperate or reveal that stuff! Now we have to go in and remove Saddam and uncover all the weapons!"

It just seems so painfully obvious to me that this "Iraq Crisis" is a manufactured one, designed to divert peoples' attention away from the fact that Bin Laden was never caught and that Al Quaeda was never shut down.

So how come I've seen those same conclusions reached on BBC World News, CBC Newsworld and other Canadian political debate shows, but never on American TV?

So, this is my weblog, eh. However, I doubt that anybody will want to hear about my boring life. :-)

But I will try to update it on a regular basis. God knows I have the time to do that. :-P