May 28th, 2007, better write that date down in your diaries as the day the world changed.

The venerable, (they say) Toronto Daily Star, Canada's largest city's entry in the rapidly becoming irrelevant world of print media, introduced their first format change since they invented coloured ink a couple of decades ago. They said it would be smaller, but it is exactly the same size as yesterday's edition so I can't tell. They point out that they have changed the typeface, which the modern world calls "font", and made some wonderfully exciting changes to the size of the headlines and column widths. All very thrilling and bound to revitalize the subscriber base and bring in new readers.

There is no doubt that they need to do something. They keep trumpeting any increase in circulation but you would have to be a moron to not notice that you can hardly walk into a hospital, government building, or Business Depot without tripping over a pile of FREE, TAKE ONE, Star papers already counted as being part of that days "circulation" numbers, anything to keep the advertising rates up.

What has my sphincter tightened however is not the new font, or the not very new size but the pearls of wisdom on the front page from the chief gnome of the day, one Jagoda Pike, Editor. Jagoda takes the occasion of this exciting format change to write about the NEW Star and how thrilled she is to be part of the NEW team, and bringing us NEW and exciting fonts and headline sizes, it is all very dizzying and makes me reach for more expresso to calm my nerves.

Jagoda also takes the occasion to tell us in breathless prose that she CANNOT THINK of a better occasion then this to announce that the Star is opening a brand NEW dialogue on one of the most important issues of the day for all Canadians, MULTICULTURALISM. That's right folks, the NEW Star's NEW direction is going to tackle the big issues of the day head on. Too bad that the "day" in question was back in 1971 when the concept was first accepted by the Federal Gov. and we first started out on the now decades long guilt trip that was sold as the pursuit of national harmony using the tools of reason and understanding of one another's sacred cultural heritage. Multiculturalism was enshrined into law in 1982, (and again with Bill C-93 in 1988) and as you can imagine, millions and millions of dollars rained down on anyone with an accent, a colorful native costume and an axe to grind or a grant to apply for. Pimping out your cultural differences became the new currency of exchange between "Community Leaders" of all stripes and any politician with access to a bank account full of OPM, (Other Peoples Money) to exchange for votes or a good Photo Op. A practice which sadly flourishes to this day.

I was there, I remember it well. Before I became a Lapsed Liberal and subsequently further evolved into political independence, I used to swallow, and (full disclosure with much shame.) spout the mantra that the world would be a better place if we all just tried harder to "embrace the rich tapestry of cultural diversity and heritage....blah, blah..." . It was pathetic. You couldn't throw a stick at a Liberal convention or meeting of any size without hitting someone dancing around wearing feathers in their hair, beads around their necks and covered in dead deer skins. It became obligatory to have a gaggle of little Greek kids in those nifty little tutu outfits bouncing around to bouzouki music at the ribbon cutting of any building or road project. I could have gotten rich if I had opened a "Rent An Ethnic" stand in any Liberal riding.

As you can tell, I could go on, and probably will some day soon, about the dumb things we did in the Age of Enlightenment Era that was the beginning of the Trudeau years. However, the point of today's post is to point out to Jagoda that her NEW direction, is not only NOT NEW, it is boring. It was boring then, boring now. Welcome to the 70's Ms. Pike.

Just further proof that your life and mine, is one big Circle song. Peter Allen, that swishy Australian boy who was married to Liza Minneli at one point, wrote and sang the lyrics that perfectly capture today's Front Page news at The Star. Mrs. Geek and I saw Mr. Allen perform "Everything Old Is New Again", in the old Imperial Room at the Royal York back in the early 70's. He was not only a great performer but a prophet as well. Truer words were never spoken.

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Of course, I am not really going to apologise to that blowhard wrecking machine of a failed politician Al Gore, but I would like to send him a message. Here in Southern Ontario, if you are lucky, you have natural gas for heating, by far the most reliable and cheapest of the mainstream, keep your ass warm in winter, heating choices. The gas companies have an enormous interest in tracking what they refer to as "Degree Days", which in short means that they pay a lot of attention to weather patterns and forecasts to enable them to predict loads on their distribution network. They are very good at this and they keep scrupulous records.

Here at the Elder Geek Casa we got our annual equal billing statement the other day and were expecting that the "WARMEST JANUARY ON RECORD" and various other "'warmest" or "mildest" calendar events over the past winter would help drive our monthly payment to South of affordable for a few months. I really feel stupid about this, I, more than most people, should be able to resist the plastic headlines and the hysterical talking heads all wound up over the inevitability of Man made Global Warming and the coming Planetary Apocalypse, but I am weak somedays and it just seeps into my consciousness. In any event, the real experts, the Gas Company, tells us that the temperature this heating season over the previous one was DOWN 8%! That is, for those of you in Ottawa, COLDER by 8%.

Sorry Al, but I'll put my experts up against yours any day of the week. These guys don't rely on grants, or government handouts, they have to get it right or lose their jobs. The jury is in. You are exposed, better get some warm clothes.

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Big announcement this week threatening to "fix" our passport problem. This problem has come about because our American friends, in response to very real threats to their security, have been thrashing about looking for a "fix" to their own problems and, as all bureaucrats do, they have pounced on the easy stuff to make noise about first. This habit of picking off the low hanging fruit whenever you are challenged by the war cry of "activists" of all stripes is all too pervasive in our present day society and comes with enormous hidden costs to us all.

Whenever you start hearing the bleating of the Chicken Littles that "SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO SOMETHING" just hold on to your wallet and keep your head down. In this case, in knee jerk response to the wildly popular but totally untrue myth that an abundance of the 911 attackers, you remember, those Saudi Arabian guys, passed into the USA from Canada because of our lax border security and weak laws.

Notwithstanding the obvious problem with that statement which is that even if they had crossed into the USA from Canada, it was the lax US border security that let them in. Whether it was at the Rainbow Bridge or LAX or JFK or El Paso, these turkeys entered the USA under the eyes and guns of US Security Agents. NOT OUR FAULT.

So, the popular myth drives the populace to bleat at their politicos who raise their heads from grazing at the trough and pronounce that the problem has been identified and will be dealt with. Henceforth, all Canadian citizens will have to have a valid passport to enter the USA. Of course, our own politicos, in denial about whether or not this will really happen, do absolutely nothing to prepare for what a 6 year old could have told them was coming. A big rush on the passport office. Canada wide we supposedly have an ability to process 17,000 passport applications a day. We have been getting 20,000. We are way behind and gonna be that way for a long time.

One of the difficulties faced by our hard working civil service in attempting to speed up the process is that our current laws require you to reapply from scratch for a new passport every 5 years. New picture, new guarantors, new application, everything. Very time consuming, totally redundant, very much a system designed by committee.

However, a not so well remembered incident is at the root of our current inability to respond to the actions imposed on our borders by the unfounded rumors driving the political agenda of our American neighbors. It was, the assassination of Martin Luther King. You see, prior the the sudden demise of the Reverend, at the hands of Mr. James Earl Ray, our passports were good for 10 years, renewable and you could actually smile in the photo. After the Reverend passed on, rumor had it that Mr. James Earl Ray, (Assassins always have 3 names, have you noticed?) was traveling on a Canadian passport. Rumor further had it that Canadian passports were very easy to obtain, preferred by assassins world wide as the passport of choice for clandestine travel and that Canada had lax border security, and weak laws to boot.

A huge uproar ensued of course and we heard that magic sound, "Somebody ought'a do sumpin about dat" and the sheep in charge in Ottawa at the time, did. The brought in 5 year passports that needed to be completely renewed with new address, background checks, the works. The very same law that we now are going to have to change to respond to the new unfounded and totally bogus response to the new myth about Canada being the source of the security problem in the US.

Dizzy yet? Harry Chapin wrote and sang a wonderful song called The Circle Song. "All my life's a circle, sunrise to sundown....." , sometimes it seems just so.

God help us if anyone ever gets past Jack Bauer and actually does nuke Santa Monica. God help us all.

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You would think that there are enough people who can read and have availed themselves of the mounting, yet I admit hard to find, evidence that the Global Warming Farce is just that, to put us in a position where our talking heads are at least being cautious about the LEVEL of hysteria in their voice's when doling out new "evidence" of the horrors to come.

Not necessarily so. We had a warm day in Toronto yesterday, about 27 C or so. Drove our weather people bananas. They were screaming into their mics that this was the ABSOLUTE WARMEST MAY 8th ON RECORD, which of course is further proof that we are all going to die and that Algore should really get that Nobel Peace Prize some pencil neck nominated him for.

Not quite so loudly is that we only beat out, by 2/10ths of a degree, May 8, 1932. Not sure what caused that hot day way back in '32. Couldn't have been SUV's, pretty sure it was not because we were using too many plastic bags for our groceries. Dead certain it was NOT because a bunch of silk-stockinged socialists were criss-crossing the planet in their Gulfstreams all the while telling us that WE were causing pollution induced Global Warming by driving to the beer store for a twofor.

As a matter of fact, there is a curious thing about the "Dirty" Thirties, that is worth knowing the next time some pin head tries to tell you that the rise in planetary temperatures is in direct correlation with Industrial Activity and man made carbon emissions. You see, we can really measure the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere over most of the last century. We have graphs showing a steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere from the late 1890's to today. A fairly straight line headed up. Unfortunately, when said graph is laid alongside a graph for the same period showing Industrial Activity, we have a small problem.

During the Great Depression, industrial output decreased by over 30% in the decade from 1929 to 1939. Guess what happened to the CO2 chart during this dramatic drop in man made emissions? It kept going up, didn't blink, stutter or stammer one little bit.

Scratch one more theory.

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As much as I hate, truly hate, to borrow anything from the one note mind of that attention seeking machine, Michael Moore. I must admit that his very first effort, the simply named, Roger and Me, was a classic for the ages. I think he really wrote the book on movie length documentaries as the natural evolutional tool of "Gotcha'" journalism. The story, his story, of a radio announcer from Flint Michigan, crisscrossing the country trying to nail an interview with the then Chairman of General Motors, Roger Smith, in an attempt to embarrass him with hard, no real answer, questions about why GM pulled out of Flint and impoverished a city and a generation or two of it's citizens was brilliantly conceived and executed.

Indeed, the hitherto unknown Moore received a well deserved Academy Award for his efforts. It is unfortunate that his then unique style has proven to be the pinnacle of his thinking. Although his fame has grown and he has become enormously rich because of his subsequent efforts, this is a sad reflection on the way modern society rewards those among us who make us laugh, sing along, or cry at the movies, and not really a meaningful measuring stick to apply to the judgement of someone's character or worthiness for praise. He has tried to repeat his formula a number of times, sticking with the game plan of picking off the low hanging fruit of what modern western citizens will react to.

Jam a microphone in front of a victim of something, anything really, and victims are not hard to find in American Society, get a tear-jerker of a quote, then ambush a politician, bureaucrat, or civic official whom may be considered responsible for the suffering of the erstwhile 'victim's" troubles and watch, (record) their squirming. No imagination required, just line 'em up and knock 'em down.

As for my dilemma, I am chasing a Roger of a different sort. Ted Rogers, he of the communications empire that is Rogers Communications Inc., is the target of my animosity and the source of my pain and I would dearly love to stick a microphone in front of his face and ask him why he is messing with my karma on a regular basis. Ted and his minions have decided that the software protocol known as bit torrent is bad for his profitability and he is actively inhibiting my ability to download files from the Interweb using this protocol.

Bit Torrent is a concept for the modern world. The almost perfect tool for the sharing of information, data, programs and multi-media files. Just the thing to allow folks to realise the promise of the usefulness of the Internet that was conjured up by the advertising geniuses working for the very same Rogers Inc. that coerced you into paying $50 a month for life to Ted and his family in the first place. Live the Dream, download movies, music, Television and chat online with new friends all around the world starting at $29.95. At least, you can do all that until it hurts Ted.

Now it seems that there is a little tarnish on the Dream. Even though you may pay $50 a month for 5 MB download speed and 100 GB a month of data transfer, Ted's boys have decided that if you actually use a piece of software that lets you come close to using that speed or transfer amount (bandwidth) they will declare you an enemy of peace and tranquility and degrade your speed to a few KB's of transfer thus making your Hi Priced, Hi Speed internet use, useless. This action on their part turns loading a web page, normally a few milliseconds of activity, into a 50 second ordeal designed to make you break something in frustration. This is what Rogers calls Traffic Shaping and they seem quite proud of it, although they spent the better part of the last year denying that they engaged in such a practice.

If this effort at Customer Behaviour Modification isn't enough, they also have been blocking access to the more popular Bit Torrent information sites. Most particularly a site " www.rlslog.net " which is a blog that talks about the latest file sharing releases available on the web. It doesn't host any files, you cannot download anything from this site, you just (used to be able to) go there and read some reviews on a web page. Unless you are a Rogers Customer that is. When I could not reach the site for a week or two I just thought that they were experiencing tech troubles, this happens. But as I began to read at various sites other people referencing Rlslog I suspected that Ted was up to a new trick and when I changed (sorry, geek speak) my proxy server address to avoid Ted's scrutiny, Rlslog popped right up without a problem.

When this kind of URL censorship goes on in China we go nuts here in the west. We post petitions, various "Activists" post nasty thoughts about China's worthiness to host the Summer Olympics and belong to the UN or take their place in the world community. But Ted just sends out his talking heads to first deny and then imply that anyone using such software is obviously some kind of terrorist, thief or at the very least a "system abuser" and "bandwidth hog" who is threatening the peaceful internet usage of all Canadians.

This is wrong folks, and if it is not illegal for Ted to do this it damn well should be. Charge you $50 a month for 5MB speed and 100 GB of data transfer and then do everything they can to make it impossible for you to use that much speed or bandwidth? Wrong. Their arguments are weak and without any merit. It is like the phone company saying to you that they are limiting your calls to local calls to people that they approved of and only personal calls at that because they discovered that you were sending FAXES over their phone lines and using up their precious lines.

Looking for suggestions. Already thought of, changing providers, ( I don't appear to have any other Hi Speed options), writing a politician, the CRTC or even Small Claims Court. Email me if you have a better idea. I would welcome the help. Sympathy would be good too.

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