the blog quebecois

At last, one of those tower games that has an application for the real world. I would pay good money for an integrated picnic anti-ant defence system.

Ants. I hate 'em, I do.

Warning: Music and sfx. You can mute it with a button at the bottom right.

Update: I noticed that a lot of searches for Antbusters were looking for tips on strategy. There doesn't seem to be a forum devoted to it, but I found this at Yahoo! Answers:

Take your first three builds, equally spaced in a perimeter around the anthill. Upgrade the two on the outside as follows (heavy cannon 1, Impact cannon 1, then eventually Ice cannon 1). For your middle cannon, (to be upgraded first and foremost) take it heavy cannon 1, heavy cannon 2, missle launcher 1. As soon as you get a missle launcher (level 19 - 20ish) it should be 1 shot kills until level 32 or so. As soon as you have the ML, upgrade the other two to ice ASAP. That will slow them down enough for your ML to get 2 hits on each any, killing everything in sight. Upgrading to ice cannon 2 is a waste of money, but upgrading after the first two ice cannons your center ML to level II is really critical. Does the most consistent damage in the game. Next cannon you place, put it about 4 cannon lengths away from the middle cannon, and make it another maxed out ML. Don't defend around the cake.

Scroll down this page for further advice.

Financial Times:

. . . the proposal tabled by Germany for next week’s G8 summit, which would require leaders to agree to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius . . .

at the hubris of it all.

Just remember this, and all will become clear:

These people are insane.

"fOLLOw mE, LaaAaADs!"

Warning: Some sounds.

Proud To Be Canadian:

In a meeting of the combined foreign affairs committee and defence committee in Ottawa, the failed former leader of the you’ve got to be kidding party, Alexa McDonough, just called our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, "dumb as an oyster."

She then quickly claimed it was an old "Atlantic Canada expression."

McDumba was the one who feigned indignant outrage for the cameras when the Conservative deputy Prime Minister Peter MacKay used an old Atlantic Canada expression from her home province of Nova Scotia in 2006, and suggested she "stick to her knitting." She pretended that it was perhaps a “sexist” reference and said it was a "sexist slur." So outraged were the liberal-left in Canada from coast to coast to coast, and so over-reported in the liberal media, that the good Peter MacKay phoned her and apologized.

That McDonough is one nasty piece of work. I blogged about the MacKay incident at the time and recalled (I couldn't find a link) a similar insult directed at Premiers Ralph Klein and Mike Harris in the 2000 federal election. One of my commenters remembered it too and provided yet another example, in almost the same language, of her contempt for men. (That link has since expired, but I found the story here.)

Well, I'll not sink to your level, Alexa -- but I will point out that there's a term used to describe a coarse and abusive woman: A fishwife.

I'm sure you've heard it before. It's an old Atlantic Canada expression.

dragged on a table in a factory
illegitimate place to be
in a packet in a lavatory
die little baby screaming fucking bloody mess
it's not an animal it's an abortion

sex pistols

Warren Kinsella, in his column in the Post today, decries the proliferation of extreme violence in entertainment. OK, it's a legitimate point, and one that I'm not entirely unsympathetic with, though how you control free expression in a (sort-of) free society is rather more problematic.

As an example of the desensitizing nature of it, he offers a scene from a recent (and unmentioned by Kinsella -- co-written by executive producer and critical darling Quentin Tarantino) horror film:

In Hostel -- which made US$50-million but cost a fraction of that to produce -- a man blowtorches a woman's face. Neither the Post, nor I, can describe what happens next.

Huh. Sounds like a typical day's work at Abu Ghraib before the unspeakable Lynndie English arrived on the scene.

I find it passing strange, though, that our shiny-new crusader for civility is also a vocalist and bass player with a punk band, the name of which neither the Post, nor I, can describe.

If you must know what it is, close your eyes and click this Wikipedia link.

I can understand how he needs to shock the bourgeoisie and all that; but it's not really elevating the discourse, is it?

The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, photographed by NASA's IKONOS satellite. More here, as well as some conventional aerial shots.

These are all hosted on something called the Chamorro Bible site, of which I can't make heads or tails. It seems to have something to do with Seventh-day Adventist missionaries.

Whatever. If you click around, you'll find other impressive pictures, such as these, of US military transport airplanes.

So, I go looking for a picture of Sun Tzu to illustrate this post and guess who pops up. I have no idea what the story is behind it. It doesn't look like it's been photoshopped, and it appears on what seems to be a serious site about the Chinese strategist. (Scroll down and it's on the right side, under "Women Warriors."

All this is a distraction from the exciting news that the scholars at Something Awful have found an early draft of Sun Tzu's famous manuscript:

Master Sun said:

If your men hear a strange sound
In the middle of the night
The best tactical maneuver available
Is to have everyone split up
And wander aimlessly in the woods
By themselves
While yelling "Hello?"

I think that Jack Layton will definitely want to read it.

I was hoping someone would be commenting on CBC's "Seven Wonders of Canada" contest, because then I wouldn't have to write about the godawful thing.

Christie Blatchford to the rescue:

. . . Ms. Jamieson had already confessed, the night before, that as a Mohawk woman, "I place a lot of value on the process," meaning the consensus-building la-la-la in which she was now engaging, though I think it fair to say that she ran the show, steered the discussion and appeared to be leading Messrs. MacGregor and McGuire around by the nose.

She looked pretty bossy to me, but I am not a Mohawk woman, so what do I know?

Plaintiffs: Mr. Rodney MacDonald, Halifax, NS
Mr. Danny Williams, St. Johns, NL

Defendant:
Honest Steve's Auto Sales, 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON

Summary of Claim:
In February of 2005, Plaintiffs visited the used car dealership located at 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario which was then trading as Dithers Car Mart. They inspected and agreed to purchase a used Geo Storm convertible in red, for the purchase price of $4,995 plus applicable taxes. The proprietor of the dealership at the time, one Mr. Paul Martin, agreed to a sales incentive of $1,000 cash back.

Clive at Doggerel Party with a parable for our times.

Actually, it was faked by the satirical website The Onion.

But given the breadth of coverage by Google Earth, it would be statistically improbable that it wouldn't find something, somewhere, on fire. Next time I hear that satellite going overhead, I am so torching this place.

Via grow-a-brain

in this fight:

Anti-Syrian Lebanese minister Ahmad Fatfat said Friday he sued a television news anchor after she made unwitting remarks on air that he could be the next politician to be killed.

While covering the bomb blast that killed anti-Syrian lawmaker Walid Eido Wednesday, an anchor on the NBN channel of pro-Syrian Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri ridiculed the incident and said Fatfat, the sports minister, would be next.

I just like to say "Ahmad Fatfat."

Ahmad Fatfat. Ahmad Fatfat. Ahhhhmaaaad Fatfat.

Fatfat. Fatfatfatfatfatfat. Fatfat.

Try it, it's fun.

but he didn't show his work, so no points, I guess.

More exam smart-assitude here.

The occasional Lego sculptures that I post are interesting mainly in the sense of: "Yowza, that's a lot of Lego blocks."

But Nathan Sawaya, formerly a corporate lawyer in New York, brings a definite artistic touch to his craft. These would be impressive enough in a more conventional medium -- in the field of constructing things with small plastic doohickeys, he'd be giving Michaelangelo a run for his money. I'm tempted to order up a copy of The Pieta to prove it (he does custom projects) but I don't think I could swing the five figure prices he charges for larger pieces.

Interview with him here. There's a photo gallery but no direct link, so scroll down to the fourth paragraph and click on the link there to see it.

Or you could go directly to his website here.

Susan Delacourt tut-tutting in The Star:

Soldiers, hockey gear and race cars are not just the stuff of young boys' wish lists any more -- they're also symbols that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is deliberately choosing to embrace.

What's puzzling some observers, however, is how all this heavily male symbolism, mixed with an aggressive, disciplinary governing style, is going to help the Conservatives get more votes in the next election, especially from women.

"It's definitely not a growth strategy. It's the opposite of a growth strategy," says pollster Nik Nanos, who says all this macho posturing may be part of the reason the federal Conservatives are stalled in the public-opinion surveys conducted in the past few months.

"It's reinforcing stereotypes that they're trying to get rid of -- which is that the Conservatives appeal to a very narrow group of voters that tend to be very male and right-wing. ... They're creating their own glass ceiling."

Nanos was interviewed in the wake of a weekend photo opportunity by Conservatives in which a NASCAR race vehicle -- owned and driven by Pierre Bourque, a popular Internet news blogger -- was emblazoned with the Tory logo. Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, whose husband, Doug, is in charge of the next election campaign for the Tories, bluntly stated the strategy behind the NASCAR appeal.

Finley told a newspaper interviewer that NASCAR fans are "our kind of people. They're hard-working families, they're taxpayers who play by the rules. And those are the people that we're targeting."

I'm sure this will come as a shock to the Star newsroom, but NASCAR's administrators aren't just a bunch of cornball good ol' boys, even if they often play that role on TV. They've built NASCAR into one of the most professional, successful organizations in sports:

After moving far beyond its Southern roots years ago, NASCAR continues to soar in nationwide popularity and is on the verge of spreading to an even broader, international audience.

NASCAR, once derided as a passion mostly for "rednecks," is now a sophisticated, multibillion-dollar enterprise that claims about 75 million fans -- including many of pop culture's glitterati -- and ranks among the nation's most popular sports in attendance and television viewership.

If they've determined that there's a market in Canada for their product, then I'd be inclined to believe them. And one demographic that they've exhaustively researched and targeted is women:

These five [women] are not an anomaly in the fast, high-octane world of NASCAR, where 42% of the fans are women, according to an ESPN Sports Poll compiled during the last 12 months from phone interviews with Americans 12 and older. That's up from 36% in 1995.

Nielsen Media Research figures from 2003 show NASCAR led the NFL and major league baseball in percentage of female viewers on broadcast networks. Women were 35% of the total audience for NASCAR, two percentage points more female viewers than for the NFL and MLB.

Tim Buckman, spokesman for Fox Sports, says the fastest growing segment of the television audience for the 2004 Nextel Cup Series on Fox is women 18-34. Their numbers are up 19% from this time last year. The next fastest growing segment: women 18-24, up 17%.

Roger VanDerSnick, NASCAR's managing director of brands and consumer marketing, credits the sport's wholesome atmosphere for attracting women to stock car racing. "It is a family-run sport. Families participate in the sport," VanDerSnick says.

"Our drivers are terrific role models that families and moms and children enjoy rooting for."

Another factor that seems to have escaped the notice of the doctrinaire feminists in the press and politics is that motor sports is one of the few -- maybe the only -- sports that allow men and women to compete against each other on the basis of merit.

Not that the ingrates remember the battlin' battleaxes who made this all possible. IndyCar driver Danica Patrick:

NEWSWEEK: Are you the Gloria Steinem of racing?

PATRICK: The what? I don't even know who that is. Is that bad?

Heh. She probably doesn't know who Susan Delacourt is, either.

Remarkable cake art from Russia. Apparently it's all edible, with no plastic or other components. It's the work of a bakery called Zhanna, from St. Petersburg, but I couldn't find any more information about it.

Many more examples here.

CNN:

A computer simulation of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, posted on the Web site YouTube by Purdue University researchers, shows how hijacked planes crashed through the twin towers, stripping fireproofing materials from the steel columns and eventually leading to their collapse.

The 3-D animation, part of a Purdue study that took 2½ half years to complete, could help engineers design safer buildings, researchers said.

"When the developers of the World Trade Center first designed the complex, they did take into account of an accidental plane crash," said Christoph Hoffman, one of the study's lead researchers. "The only thing they didn't anticipate is the fire. If the crash impacts the water line, then a fire can burn for a long time."

I don't think this is the entire animation, but it shows the initial moments of the jets hitting, primarily from a viewpoint inside the towers. It's about five minutes long. There aren't any sound effects, but there is some narration.

Speaking of criminals, O.J. Simpson's (ghostwritten) fantasy memoir, If I Did It was leaked a few days ago (by O.J.? I wouldn't doubt it.) to the celebrity gossip site, TMZ.com, apparently in violation of a court order granting rights to the manuscript to the father of the murdered Ron Goldman.

That page disappeared following the filing of new papers charging contempt of court. But this being the Internet age and all, mirrors are popping up like mushrooms. You can download (Warning: PDF) a copy here. (Scroll down to the bottom-third of the page, where the download is indicated by a flashing red arrow.)

Or you might just want to read this excerpt at TMZ (the page has now reappeared). Warning: Language.

Last night CBC reported that 14 US soldiers had been killed that day in Iraq. From all the context that Mansbridge and Co. provided (none), one might have thought that they were all struck by lightning.

What went entirely unremarked was that the surge of US forces into al Qaeda strongholds is now in full gear, and things aren't looking so rosy for the CBC's favorite plucky "insurgents." To be sure, the CBC's deliberate suffocation of the most important current story in Iraq isn't surprising: If it looks like the Americans are succeeding, you won't hear a word about it out of dear old Mothercorp. So it's safe to conclude that the terrorists are on the receiving end of a major butt-kicking.

For confirmation, we go to Michael Yon, who, despite not having a billion-dollar budget, managed to get himself to the scene and embedded with a Stryker Combat Team:

The combat in Baqubah should soon reach a peak. Al Qaeda seems to have been effectively isolated. The initial attack on 19 June achieved enough surprise that al Qaeda was caught off guard and trapped. They have been beaten back mostly into pockets and are surrounded and will be dealt with.

[. . .]

As of about noon in Baqubah on the 22nd, there seems to be a lull in the fighting. A calm. This is about to get wet. At the going rate, al Qaeda in Baqubah will soon have two choices: Surrender, or die.

To put it simply, this is the devil's bacon. Even a healthy dose of bread, mayo, lettuce and tomato couldn't come close to masking the evil. The bitter nastiness literally got worse with every chew, and I was overcome by the urge to go in the backyard and eat grass until it was all out of me.

An old humor series that I stumbled across by accident, featuring an adventurous fellow who snacks on the unthinkable and then reports on the experience.

Warning: Shall we say that the language is sometimes as gross as the subject matter? We shall say that. We shall also say that it's very often laugh-out-loud funny.

They say dames are like flowers. Maybe they’re right. Nice to look at, fun to smell, covered in complicated reproductive do-dads. But brother, get too close and you’ll also find out that they have thorns. And bees. And enough pollen to flood your sinus with a hot painful load of mucus that’ll take a jumbo economy size box of Claritin and a six pack of hankies to forget.

It’s a hard lesson you learn every day in my line of work.

My name is Rather. And I’m a dick.

Iowahawk rolls out another of his hard-boiled Dan Rather mysteries, hot on the trail of Katie Couric's missing viewers. With a supporting cast of the blogosphere's seamier characters, including "Mongo Steyn, the hulking French Canadian punditry thug".

Just like the title says -- touch the bubbles with your mouse (more correctly with your cursor) before they collide with the sides. It starts getting hectic about the third level or so.

Warning: Gentle music and sfx.

Toronto Star:

A growing number of Canadians are calling on the Conservative government to bring Omar Khadr home from the notorious U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to an a survey from Angus Reid Strategies.

That's music to the ears of Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney, given that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other federal cabinet ministers won't demand the Canadian citizen be released from Guantanamo, as other countries have done for their own detainees.

"Khadr is a pawn in this whole game of the war on terrorism. I see him as a political prisoner ... Canada hasn't done a thing for him," said the Edmonton lawyer, who met yesterday with U.S. military lawyers appointed to defend Khadr.

Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was just 15, after a firefight with U.S. forces.

Well, that's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that he ambushed and killed an American Special Forces soldier (most press accounts describe Sgt. Christopher Speer as a medic, which he was indeed trained as; though not acting in that capacity while leading his squad through a bombed-out compound).

The survey of 1,028 people found that 51 per cent believe Ottawa should actively intervene to secure Khadr's release, up from 40 per cent just two weeks ago, said Craig Worden, vice-president, public affairs at Angus Reid.

Who are these people? Everyone that I've talked to is in agreement that the traitorous little bastard can rot where he is. We're already paying enough in welfare for the rest of his useless family.

Lead singer Chad Kroeger was having trouble coming up with a name, and so approached his brother, who worked at a Starbucks. Coffee was $1.95, which meant every customer who paid two bucks got-- waiiiit for it -- a nickel back. (It was either that or We're Sorry About the Homeless Man Shooting Up in the Bathroom.)

The thrilling stories of how Nickelback (Lordy, how I hate that band) and others got their names.

Good thing Alberta doesn't have a provincial sales tax, or they might have wound up as "Hey, Wait A Bit, I Think I've Got A Couple Of Pennies."

Warning: Language.

On the assumption that you have utterly nothing else to do this weekend, here's something to keep you occupied. Using the arrow keys, sweep the sunlight back and forth and toast as many tourists as you can.

I hesitate to call it a game --- it looks like a Flash programming project to demo the work of its creator, a university student in England. It ends when some (apparently arbitrary) number of tourists are on the beach.

Warning: Music and sfx.