You are Entitled to Any Opinion as Long as It's Ours.

It seems that “Reefer Madness” is playing in Wawota, Saskatchewan, and I am not talking about the musical. It all started one find day in May when the school showed a supposedly “educational” video about the evils of the Demon Weed. One of young people who watched this presentation just didn’t buy it. It is not that Kieran King was in anyway advocating the use of marijuana, but rather that the alleged “facts” used in the video were wildly inaccurate. Read the whole story here:

Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts.

I find it to be extremely disheartening to find that the school system in Saskatchewan has not changed in any remarkable way in the 30 odd years since I last graced their classrooms. My recollection of my high school is that for the most part, it was a hotbed of apathy beginning with the teachers and flowing down to the student the student body. With few exceptions, the teachers often displayed less maturity than the students they were entrusted to teach.

In this one situation we have a remarkably bright young man who did something most of his peers could not be bothered to do - research and think. As a result, he came to some conclusions that the Powers That Be did not want him to know and certainly not share. At that point, the principal of the school, Susan Wilson, crapped her pants in fear of intellectual curiosity and made an Everest out of a proverbial mole hill.

Thank you, Susan Wilson, I am sure that the town of Wawota is utterly thrilled that you have made it a national laughingstock.

Oh.. those Sneaky Canadians.

Once upon a time, a couple of American Defense contractors (whose names have never been disclosed) came to Canada. Upon their arrival, they found that they had been "tagged" by a suspicious looking coin; one of which had been found in the cup holder of a rental car. It was plainly obvious that these coins "were filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology". The worried contractors filed confidential espionage reports.

The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defense Security Service, an agency of the Defense Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through Canada.

And the Panic was on.


Remember folks, these are the people who swore Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction.

Another Great Moment in Censorship

All because two paragraphs show depict something that people find "uncomfortable".
This is almost as bad as the time a teacher was fired for showing a puppet version of Faust in a music class.

As poignant as it is painful, "Kaffir Boy" reached the top of the Washington Post best-seller list and No. 3 in the New York Times list. It earned the 1987 Christopher Award for literature, "affirming the highest values of the human spirit." And it was a finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Award for books representing "concern for the poor and the powerless.

Burlingame Schools pull 8th Grade Book From Class

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.

The Case of Julie Amero

In short, a 40 year old substitute teacher faces up to 40 years in prison because of malware. I really can't believe that this case has gone to the levels it has reached. Her crime? Being computer illiterate.

People as her why she just didn't pull the plug.

1. She was told not to turn the computer off.
2. I work in technical support, and I speak to people every day who can't even recognize a power cable. Or for that matter, understand the that the co-relation between a power outtage and the fact that their equipment doesn't work. No, that's not an urban legend. The world is full of them.
   

This had got to be one of the worst cases of judicial stupidity I've seen of late. A so called "expert witness" who is completely and utterly clueless about the subject, a computer illiterate prosecuter, an ignorant jury and a judge who slept through the proceedings.

A couple more articles:

Can a Legal System Unversed in Technology result in a fair Trial?

Mouse Trapped

The latest news says that her sentencing has again been delayed until April 26/07.