Next killer app on the computer will be:

Privacy!

Google has been watching you:

Until now, Chinese net users who were blocked from accessing a site knew that the information was there and was being kept from them by their own government. From now on it is Google which will be keeping data from them, in direct contradiction of its own declared mission “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

The reaction to Google’s move has been highly critical. The watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders called it “a black day for freedom of expression in China”, adding that “Google’s statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China”. It seemed that the company’s real motto was something more along the lines of “don’t be evil unless the Chinese government asks you to and there’s serious money in it”.

What having the servers in China means for Chinese surfers is that every goddamn thing they do on-line can be observed in real time by some Party apparatchik, or stored and analyzed by some kind of program that pings if they search for the wrong thing.  Like "freedom" or some such dire concept.

But gee Phantom, can't the eeeevile Chimpybushilter gubmint do the same thing?  Technically, yes, the capability exists.  Practically, no.  Its politically impossible for them to strong arm that info out of Google, and if they tried it they'd be sorry.  Besides, that's why they have the NSA watching for specific keywords.  They don't need Google if they can sift out terrorist communiques from the flood.

However this may not always be the case.  Let some terrorist do something serious, and that could turn on a dime.  Google would be falling all ovver itself to offer up whatever they've got.  Or:

So far everyone who has invested in Google has made out like the proverbial bandit; but one day the share price will drop and people who have bought shares will find they have lost money. It is then that Google’s leaders will come under pressure to find some uses for that goldmine of personal data.

Read the whole article, its an eye opener for sure.

At any rate, if I'm any observer of human nature one thing that bugs the hell out of people is somebody looking over their shoulder all the time.  The idea that some government bastard in some cube farm in Maryland is looking at and passing judgement on one's web use, opinions and general existence is galling in the extreme.  But at least we can vote them out if they become annoying.  Free country and all.

The idea that some other, different bastard is going to SELL that data, not only to the highest bidder but to anyone and everyone with the price, that's beyond galling and getting into the danger zone.

So while it probably won't be possible to remain private from government eyeballs, I predict the next killer app for computer users is the Google Spoofer.  I mean, what's the point of using a pseudonym if you're leaving your DNA all over every server on the web, right?

I wonder if Anonymizer is on the stock market?

The Phantom

Why we call The Star "Pravda".

The Toronto Star once again earns its unoffical moniker, Pravda.  This is possibly the most blatantly editorial "news" piece I've ever seen.

Dozens of high-powered weapons that have flooded Toronto streets were stolen from a well-known gun collector and firearms instructor who kept his dangerous stash in a subsidized housing apartment in Scarborough.One of the guns taken from the apartment was used last September in one of the worst bloodbaths in the history of Toronto - a triple murder near the end of the Summer of the Gun, in a year marked by the worst gun violence the city has seen. Today, the collector, Mike Hargreaves, is a fugitive from Canadian justice, living in a modest, two-storey stucco home a few kilometres from Disney World. Many of the 32 to 35 guns stolen from his Toronto apartment (machine guns, Glock handguns and assault rifles) are still on the streets.

That's just the opening paragraph, and already there's a problem with it.  Mr. Hargreaves has been charged with improper storage.  But get this:

Working for two days, thieves used sledgehammers and blowtorches to blast open the 1,700-pound, concrete-and-steel Brinks safe. They made off with about 35 guns, including military assault rifles, machine guns, and semi-automatic pistols, a bullet pressing machine and dozens of rounds of ammunition.

Two days?  It took them two friggin' days to break the safe, and Hargreaves gets charged with improper storage?  I wouldn't come back for that steamroller derby either.  Chance of justice, zero.  Chance of jail, 100%.  Gotta have a fall guy, y'know.

But whatever, here's my absolute favorite quote from the article.

Hargreaves says housing officials were unaware that he was storing firearms near families with children.

Yeah, in a safe that took two days for yobs with cutting torches and sledge hammers to break into.  What a bastard!  What a danger to the community!  Those poor chilllldren.

The Phantom

Ripping off the sheets of the Canadian Left.

This is the response of the peace-love-dove Left to Monday's election:  NUKE THE AMERICANS!

Seems Robert McClelland thinks the only real threat to Canada is America, and we should "accuire" nuclear weapons to use on them if they get rowdy.  This is what passes for thought on the Left.  Robert seems to have forgotten that Canada is a ribbon 3000 miles long and 200 miles wide, tight up against the US border.  Anything large we throw at them will splash on us.  Typical Lefty.  Then there's the whole missile thing, as in we don't have any.  Kinda hard to nuke New York without a missile.

I love watching the Left come apart in this country.  Its sooo good on them.  The more we Conservative leaning types win the louder and more insane the Left becomes.  Louder please!

The fact of the matter is that the only real threat to Canadian sovereignty in the last thirty years has been the Liberal Party of Canada.  If we want to be in charge of the North West Passage (if it ever melts) all we need to do is patrol it.  You know, with airplanes and ships and stuff.  Maybe a couple of submarines to keep track of the Russians.  The reason we don't have that stuff right now is the Liberals.  Maybe the Harperites will buy some, that'd be nice.

Still, if we need nuclear weapons we are in a good position, we have lots of Candu reactors lying around to brew up weapons grade fuel in.  After all, that's what the Indians and the Pakistanis used to make their nuke bombs:  Canadian Candu reactors.  Sold to them by Canada.  No shit.

Didn't know that, didja?

The Phantom

This is a giggle. :)

It would seem that my  Unitarian Jihad name is:  Brother Sharpened Screwdriver of Enlightened Debate.  Odd, yet somehow appropriate.  ~:D  Get yours here.

These wags even have a Wiki article.  Wiki waggy woo.

The Phantom

Question du jour.

The Question of the day is:

How great a fool is Algore?

Quoth he:

"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests."

Now, I haven't looked to see what corporations gave what money to Harper and the Tories.  But I don't have to.  If Algore's canard had even a grain of truth to it the Liberals and NDP would have been all over it like ugly on a wart hog.  He's flat-out lying.  As usual.

But that just makes him a weasel.  What makes him a fool is that he's lying about something that is so easy to check.  $1000 is the maximum donation for an individual or corporation in this country.  Only the Moveon.dork crowd is going to give this a moment's thought.

The Phantom

Britian quietly takes the next step down the road

British police are begining to show a rather frightening side.  They arrive and start making inquiries after comments are made on radio and TV shows.  Here's a beauty example:

TWYFORD strawberry farmer Eric Jarnet is fuming after police confiscated his shotgun on his 70th birthday because they feared he might emulate Norfolk farmer Tony Martin.

Mr Martin became a national figure after the shotgun killing of a burglar at his farmhouse.

An exasperated Mr Jarnet publicly admitted he might "do a Martin" after raiders stole hundreds of yards of irrigation piping from his 25-acre Twyford Fruit Farm in London Road, effectively putting him out of business.

Moments after he made his remarks police arrived to seize his shotgun, for which he has a licence.

<snippage>

Police spokesman Tim Wiseman said: "If anyone is making these public comments then we have a duty to check them out. Firearms, particularly in West Berkshire, are a sensitive issue."

"Concerns were passed to police following comments Mr Jarnet made on a local radio station. Thames Valley Police have a duty to make sure that no risk exists."

"We obviously had to respond to this and a firearms inquiries officer went round, and Mr Jarnet surrendered his gun."

That's a further step down the road to perdition, eh?  Thieves wipe out a guy's business, he gets interviewed on radio and pops off a bit about what he'd like to do to the scum that just ruined him, and THE COPS COME FOR HIM.  Next step, 2 AM no-knock warrant service on political undesirables.

Good thing the Conservatives just won in Canada eh?  ~:D

The Phantom

VICTORY IS OURS!

VICTORY!

The Conservative party of Canada has won a minority government!  Hoowah!  Martin has resigned.  All is right with the world.

The election results make it clear that most of geographical Canada is Conservative, with Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver addicted to redistributionism.  That's ok, I don't care.  A CPC majority would have been nice, but a minority will keep their heads from getting too big.  That's never a bad thing in government I think.

The real victory today is that the control of the vast regulatory machinery goes to someone who won't use it for his own ends, and will (if he keeps his promises!) start taking it apart.  Begining, I hope, with gun control.

The Phantom

British gun experiment continues on as expected.

Britian's experiment with letting Big Brother do it all is going as expected:  badly.

Record levels of gun crime are being blamed on the fact that more people than ever are carrying firearms as fashion accessories.

Figures published this week by the Home Office are expected to show that offences involving guns have soared by as much as 50 per cent in some parts of the country.

The greatest rises have been in the number of people found in possession of firearms and in the number of attempted murders.

Proving once again that Big Brother cannot keep you safe from the Bad People. 

The important thing to take home from this Independent article is not that the British Police are incompetent.  They are very competent.  Its just that they are trying to do something that is impossible.  As in can't be done.  Nobody can do it.  Not gonna happen no matter how much money gets spent or how many CCTV cameras there are.  Big Brother is a sham.

He can however take everything you have and kick your ass besides, so perhaps voting for the Big Brother party isn't such a good idea.

Here in Canada we have four (4) Big Brother parties, Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Greens.  We used to have five, because the Progressive Conservatives were right into Big Brother.  Not a good thing.

With their demise we now have the Conservative Party of Canada, CPC, who are not into Big Brother.  Little Brother maybe.  They think that government is good, but perhaps we could do with just a little less of it.  Canada looks after the poor and downtrodden, but if you are not in dire straights maybe you should just get on with it and not be holding your hand out.

So I voted for them this morning, and their campaign signs are all over my front lawn.  Hopefully tonight will see the CPC form the government, and then we shall see if my assessment is correct.

The Phantom

Harper speaks the essence.

Mr. Harper may look like a robot, he is after all a pretty stiff guy.  But when it comes to pithy statements of truth, he's got a knack.  Here's as good an encapsulation of the whole campaign as I've seen from anyone.  h/t Neal News.

Harper was asked about the Liberal strategy of the last several days that seemed bent on getting voters to hate Conservatives and Harper. "Canadians don't hate things. That is not the nature of Canadians. Canadians can disagree but it takes a lot to get Canadians to intensely hate something or hate somebody and usually it involves hockey."

Now THAT is a Canadian Value.  Hate and fear don't sell well in Canada.  The West does not hate and fear Quebec.  They're irritated for sure, but a righting of a few wrongs, a gesture of respect or two and they will be ok with the whole thing.  Likewise Ontario does not hate and fear the West or Quebec. 

There are hateful and fearful examples from Moronto (subset of Toronto:), but these people are Lefty and Righty fringy types.  The fringe isn't the mainstream, its where the fruitloops go to rave.

So the spectacle of Martin running from Victoria to Halifax, trying to create hate and fear between regions of the country, just for his own personal benefit, that was really something.  What a wanker.  Even the media couldn't stand it this time.

Go forth and vote Conservative today, would be my advice.

The Phantom

Latest thing in guns gets a test drive by US military

Its Metal Storm, finally getting a go from the Yanks.  Hot damn!  This is the first genuinely new idea in firearms since the gas-operated self loader.

Next month a new high-explosive munition will be fired in Singapore and then tested again by the U.S. Army, heralding what may be a sea change in weaponry: a gun that can fire 240,000 rounds per minute.

Well, make that a rate of 240,000 per minute.  The thing is more like a Claymore mine that you can aim.  But you can make the barrels any size, from pistol rounds to howitzers.  Recoil is probably the limiting factor.

Just the thing to stick on a UAV though, eh?  Nice area weapon.  Drift in, hit the target with 800 rounds in two seconds flat, scoot.  Awesome.  Nice thing to have mounted on a pintle on top of your truck too.  Omar lobs a mortar round at you, this thing locks on and obliterates it in half a second.  Reload and blast Omar while he fiddles with his mortar.  Hoowah.

The Bloodthirsty Phantom

Official Canadian Government Policy on Gun Owners: GET OUT!

h/t to Kate at SDA and Steve at Angry.

Lots of people over the years have intimated to me that I am a paranoid nutcase.  I've been saying the Liberal Party (and the NDP too for that matter) has declared war on gun owners.  They intend to ban guns, but more than that they intend to punish anyone insane enough to even want one.  That seems nuts, right?

I wish it was.

Don Lindsay's self destruction continued when club member and Canadian Veteran George Tompkins stood to ask the candidates his question. "If the handgun ban goes forward.  What plan would your party offer to compensate those of us who legally own the guns that would be confiscated?"  To which Lindsay replied "Sir America is our neighbor not our nation, if you elect a society that talks about that kind of perspective I suggest that perhaps you go there!" 

Mr. Lindsay is a Liberal MP.  One could say he's just one guy having a meltdown, but Paul Martin has said this kind of thing before, on national TV too.  You want to own a gun?  Move to America, damn you!  That's official policy of the ruling party, kids.  Kinda scary eh?

Good thing there's an election!

The Phantom

One more reason to vote Conservative.

It'll torque off Michael Moore.  BWAHAHA!!!

The Phantom

So much for "no harm".

Interesting news on the health front, serious STDs have increased dramatically of late.

According to the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, these rates have surged, despite an ongoing barrage of publicity about safe sex.

• The rate of chlamydia rose by 70 per cent to almost 30,000 cases in 2004. People aged 15 to 24 mostly had the infection.
• Gonorrhea infections went up by 80 per cent to 4,013 cases in 2004. Men aged 20 to 29 had the highest rate of infection. Among women, those aged 15 to 24 had the highest number of cases of gonorrhea.
• Syphilis infections rose by a whopping 908 per cent to 598 cases in 2004. Men mainly over the age of 30 had syphilis, with a significant proportion of its transmission occurring between homosexuals.

Note that the Society is a proper doctor's organization, not some fruitloop Conservative propaganda machine.

Now, as I recall the Supreme Court of Canada recently found that because "sex clubs" (i.e. places where strangers go to do it all different ways with other strangers and pay money for the privelige) caused no "harm" to society, they were legal and that the owners could not be charged under local bawdy house regs.

I point out that this current increase in STDs is NOT due to such clubs, because there pretty much aren't any.  Maybe ten or twenty in the whole country, max.  But should such establishments become as common as strip clubs, or more likely should strip clubs turn into sex clubs, we could be looking at some pretty serious business.

But hey, the Supreme Court aren't activist judges, noooo.  That Harper, what a maroon.

The Phantom

Al Qaeda targets Alaska pipeline.

So much for the peace through superior groveling crowd.  From the National Post today:

B.C.'s energy sector is on heightened alert after an al-Qaida-affiliated Internet blog message called on Canadian and U.S. jihadists to attack an Alaskan oil pipeline.

"The most suitable candidates for these operations are our American Muslim brothers who live on the land of trash . . . Also, we can add to this jihad group any other groups who can reach the American terrorist regime, either directly or through neighbouring countries, like Canada or Mexico," the posting says.

Nice.

What is even better is that Canadian Forces doesn't have the equipment or the manpower to secure that pipeline.  If it needs to be protected, American troops are going to be the ones doing it.  We don't have the aircraft, helicopters nor even SNOWMOBILES to put men on the ground fast if they are needed.  We don't have the fancy surveillance gear.  We don't have anything, really.  Well, other than a really nice collection of 1960's military antiques.  Some of the stuff still works too!

Thank you Mr. Chretien, Mr. Martin and especially Mr. Trudeau.  Good thinking, you saps.

The Phantom

Liberal "thinking" on crime.

Sometimes you read something, and you just shake your head.  This is one of those time

After an unprecedented summer of gun deaths in Toronto, two senior provincial ministers, the Attorney-General and the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, endorsed a sweeping plan to create an "offender-focused" justice system.

Ok, so what does "offender focused" mean in English when translated from Liberal Bafflegab?  It means they were going to let more criminals out earlier and close some jails, that's what. 

No, I'm not kidding.  I wish, but no.  This is really what they really proposed.

A series of detailed briefing notes, including some marked "confidential Cabinet document," that outline proposed changes were obtained by the National Post. They say the goal is to create an "offender-focused" justice system and seek "cost-effective alternatives to custody and court processes."

The plan was to "increase the range of offences/offenders who can be diverted by using community-based alternatives to the criminal justice system."

It would keep "more offenders supervised in the community at $25 a day instead of incarcerated in a correctional facility at $162 a day," the documents say.

A key measure of success would be additional "diversion from custody" with an apparent target or quota of an extra 5% to 10% of offenders never reaching jail, the documents say.

...

The plan also called for the closing of several jails in Toronto, Chatham, Monteith and Thunder Bay, as well as largely shutting down one of the large jails, either Penetanguishene or Lindsay. A plan to build a new jail in Toronto was also to be scrapped.

So was this some blue-sky deal whipped together by a couple of dumb-ass politicians?  Nooo.  Nuh uh.  Check it:

The plans were in an advanced state of progress through both the bureaucratic and government channels when rejected.

At least three people were hired to oversee the changes, including a criminologist, a lawyer and a former federal bureaucrat. "Base funding" for the plan of $5.9-million had already been approved with another $4.5-million "on holdback" pending Cabinet and Treasury Board approvals.

Yeah baby!  Hell, they even had some payback for a Liberal buddy in there.  This was The Plan, pretty much.  Dalton McGuinty seems to be the only guy in Queens Park with a functioning neuron, because he's the one that killed it.

Let's listen in on the meeting where this was presented, shall we?

Michael Bryant:  "So that's our cost cutting plan Dalton.  We release most of the offenders on bail, and keep them out in the community instead of in jail because its cheaper.  Don't have to feed 'em."
Monte Kwinter:  "Huh, uh, yup yup.  Hehe."
Dalton McGuinty:  "So your brain trust's answer to 54 murders in the GTA this year is to let more criminals out faster, and shut a bunch of jails.  Right?"
Michael Bryant and Monte Kwinter:  "Uh, yup."
Dalton McGuinty:  "Sounds good!  How's the focus group data?"
Un-named Liberal Factotum:  "Uhm, sir, the focus group tried to kill and eat the group leader when this was brought up.  Then they ran amok and smashed up all the furniture.  We had to subdue them with tasers, cake and ice cream."
Dalton McGuinty:  "Goddamn voters!  No vision, any of them.  Oh well, tough shit Mikey and Monte, your plan is toast."
Michael Bryant and Monte Kwinter: "Uh, yup ok boss.  Heh heh, yup yup."

h/t Proud to be Canadian

The Phantom

Why Toronto votes Liberal

When asked why Toronto votes solidly Liberal, people from the ROC (Rest Of Canada) will usually say something about mental acuity.  Moronto is a term that has gained popularity the last few years.

This cannot be the case however.  Unless "They" are putting something in the water, 4 million people can't all be imbeciles.  So what's the deal?

Well here's a nice little article that talks about the situation.  From the National Post, h/t to NealNews.

Most amazing fact listed?  49% of Torontonians were born outside Canada.  Its like a foreign city-state parachuted into Canada.  While there is certainly nothing wrong with being born outside Canada, that major a concentration of immigrants does explain a lot about voting patterns.  They have different concerns than native-born Canadians, one of which is how they are going to get Grandma Jones into Canada from the old country. 

Obviously they are going to vote for the party with the most open immigration policy. 
They will be less concerned with the niceties of social policy.
They won't care a damn about The West because they've never been there and don't plan on going.
Excessive regulation of landowners, farmers not making it, high gas prices,blah blah, they don't care because they live downtown, ride the TTC and never see any of that stuff. 
Gun control?  What, trust these crazy white people with guns?  Are you nuts? 
Spend money on the military?  So they can come burn my house down?  Nuh uh. 
Quebec?  Where's that?

This confluence of interests also explains much about Liberal behaviour.  When in doubt, spend money in Toronto on issues popular with immigrants.  The West?  Why bother, they are all Conservatives anyway.  Make the Tamil Tigers a banned terrorist group?  No way, think of all those votes in Don Valley! 
Gun control?  Hell yeah, that's a winner downtown baby!  Screw the damn farmers!  Screw the military! 

What immigrants and native-born alike will notice though is the reek of Liberal corruption.  I wager the Toronto incumbents will have a much harder fight this time out than in previous years.  Nobody likes a thief, particularly people that came to Canada to escape thieves in the first place.

The Phantom

The Phantom, BANNED at My Blahg!

Holy crap kids! I've done it! I've made holier than thou Robert
McClelland, the uber-tolerant "I'll never ban anyone because I believe
in Free Speech" socialist extrordinaire, ban me. Took me like six
months of unrelenting effort to wear him down, but the job is done. Hot
damn.

Robert's really dreading January 23rd I think. Bet there's no
Conservative commenters left by Monday. We shall see!

Feat of Heroism.

Today in the news is word that one of the Canadian soldiers wounded in an Afghanistan car bombing performed one of the great feats of heroism of our time.  Angry in the Great White North has started a campaign to get him a Victoria Cross.  I think his wife should get another one.

Here's what we know:

With part of his leg blown off, Master Cpl. Paul Franklin wrapped a tourniquet around his thigh, then went to help three other wounded passengers after a suicide bomber destroyed the military vehicle he was driving.

"He's a medic, so he had the wherewithal to do that," Audra Franklin said from her home in Edmonton, proudly describing her husband's heroic actions yesterday in Kandahar.

From her composure as she sat watching replays of the footage on TV, it was hard to tell her husband had just lost his lower left leg and had his right leg shattered.

"I want to make sure that the face of the Canadian military family is one of a strong person, who can deal with this," she said.

Read the whole article, its worth knowing.  The guy lost his lower leg and foot on one side from the blast, and had multiple fractures in the other leg.  That hurts.  He shrugged it off, tied off the leaker, and went in to save his buddies.  Two of whom are still alive, probably because he fixed them up.  I agree with Angry, that's Victoria Cross, Andrew Mynarski territory this guy just entered.

This is the kind of guy Paul Martin's Liberal Party wants us to be afraid to have in Canadian cities.  I'm not making this up.  This is the kind of guy Paul Martin's Liberals have refused to buy proper vehicles and equipment for, for twelve years.  The kind of guy who hasn't got any Canadian air support because our antique F-18s can't fly that far.

I'll wager that the Liberals are viewing this man's bravery and sacrifice with a mixture of  calculation, disdain and horror.  They'll be trying to figure out how to spin this for maximum effect to prop up their sagging numbers and avoid the splash from that obscene ad campaign of theirs.  They'll be thinking what a sucker this guy is to get himself blown up for a glorified photo-op and flag showing operation, as they scramble to manage the media response.  They will be feeling the cold breath of retribution on their necks, because if they don't keep control of the country their past sins will come quickly to light.  That'd be my somewhat cynical best guess today.

I think Canadians generally and Paul Franklin in particular deserve better leaders than that.  Good thing there's an election on, eh?

The Phantom

Liberal meltdown live during the debate

My my MY!  Lookee here!  The Liberals have wisely withdrawn this advertisement, which reveals a lot more about them than their target, Stephen Harper.  These people are NUTS ladies and germs!  They are completely bonkers!  View the video, it is really quite amazing.  They claim that Harper is going to put soldiers with guns in Canadian cities.  No kidding.  As if Canadian soldiers are some kind of storm troopers, that are going to shoot on sight.  Funny to see them admit this.

Ok, so that's not the whole story!  Here's the rest of it.  I linked to Angry In The Great White North, but its all over the blogs up here. 

Mike Duffy is a CTV talking head, and normally he's a Liberal buddy.  Paul Martin farts, Mike Duffy comments positively on the aroma.  He's a reliable Liberal newz reader, pretty much.

This clip is Mike Duffy telling off a top Liberal weenie (John Duffy, no relation) for trying to get Mike not to mention the ad.  So it would certainly seem that the Liberal apparatchiks are leaning HARD on their press boys to get the spin they want on the news.  Probably have been for quite a while.  It also seems the press boys are getting tired of being leaned on.  You can only kick the dog so many times, eh?

These Liberals are starting to get scared.  Makes me wonder how many more skeletons are falling out of closets up there in Ottawa right now.  Twelve years is a loooong time for bones to accumulate, I bet we are going to see some pretty serious shit come to light.

Should the Conservatives form a government, it will be VERY interesting to see how many Liberal Big Kahunas up stakes and move to places we don't have extradition treaties with.

The Phantom

Buckytube armor announced.

Well now, this is something I've been blathering about since the stuff was discovered! An Israeli company, ApNano, has announced a new armor material made from "nanotechnology".

They said the nano-based armor, which stemmed from a new carbon form called Inorganic Fullerenes, withstood the impact.

The company's chief executive officer, Menachem Genut, said the company would launch initial production within the next six months. Genut said this would mean the production of between 100 and 200 kilograms of the nano-material per day.

By 2007, Genut said, ApNano, based in Nes Ziona, Israel, would begin full-scale production of the armor. This would mean the production of several tons per day.

If they can do this and aren't bullshitting us, they will be the largest producers of nanotubes in the world.  Furthermore if they can do this, then nanotube cables and composites for civillian use won't be far behind.  Awsome!

Not just carbon tubes either.  Turns out you can make Fullerene tubes out of lots of things.

I want a plastic composite engine block threaded with carbon nanotubes with iron whisker cylinder linings, diamond coated piston rings, ceramic pistons and heads, blah blah blah that runs 25,000 rpm at 1,200 degrees F please.  1000 horsepower out of an 1800cc displacement, fuel efficiency approaching 100%.  Yeah baby!  That's what we're talkin' here.

Oh, and the armor should stop a .308 in small thickness too, like 1/8th inch or thereabout.  Hot damn!

The Starry Eyed Phantom Gearhead.

The results of mindless leniency.

An 11 year old girl was abducted from her home near Shellbrook Sask. on Monday, choked, beaten and released to walk home.  Doesn't sound like much does it?  Not a hanging crime, certainly.

Well, let us get a little deeper here shall we?

The RCMP news release said the child was "released" from her abductor's vehicle outside the nearby community of Canwood, where she walked into town and reported the incident at a local business. That makes it sound like she didn't have far to go, her uncle said.

"This kid walked from near Canwood where she was thrown out, down the ditch to Shellbrook . . . and on our way home we could see the prints. She said, 'Uncle, when I seen lights come I had to hide in the ditch because I didn't want to get taken again.' She was burying herself in the snowbanks to hide from the cars because she was too scared to seek help from the cars going by."

But wait, there's more.

The little girl was violently pushed out of the vehicle into the snow near Canwood and walked a considerable distance into Shellbrook without shoes or a jacket, developing frostbite on her feet, her uncle said.

Temperature in Canwood Sask. last night was around 21F or -6C depending on your taste.  Either way, that's friggin' cold.  From my reading of the map at Yahoo, the kid walked about 10k or more.  In the snow.  No coat. No shoes. Choked half to death.  Beat on, then tossed out of a moving car.  Hiding from the cars in the snowbanks in case he came back.

There's more, including the Keystone Kops cluster fuck regarding how the perp got caught here, but you can read all that yourself.  Kate at Small Dead Animals has some rather pointed comments regarding the case.  She lives out that way, apparently the perp is not a first timer at this kind of thing.  As usual.

We don't have a crime problem here in Canada.  What we have is a government problem.  Our government justice apparatus refuses to deter repeat offenders from making robbery, mayhem and murder into a career.  Its like a religious thing with them.  Any time some atrocity is inflicted upon an innocent like this little girl, or the 15 year old girl who got killed on Yonge St. on Boxing day due to a firefight between gang bangers, or you friggin' name it all we hear about is tolerance for minorities and increasing spending on social programs. 

Punishment  for the guilty?  Never hear it.  And that I think is why we have a problem with these dirtbags.  If they though something really BAD would happen to them they wouldn't pull this crap.

Just remember on election day who wants to punish the guilty instead of hosting Midnight Basketball games.  Hint, its the CONSERVATIVES!!!

The Phantom

Intelligent response to intelligent question

When FINALLY asked an intelligent question about "gun violence" in Toronto, people have given an intelligent answer.  From the National Poost today:

More than three-quarters of Toronto residents believe lenient judges are allowing gun crime to flourish in Canada's cities, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the National Post and Global News.

Following the Boxing Day shooting of 15-year-old Jane Creba, 76% of respondents to the Ipsos Reid survey said lax judges are a "major factor" spurring gun violence. One of the suspects charged in relation to the gunfight that killed Ms. Creba and left six others wounded was out on parole at the time of the incident.

"People are really wondering what these judges are doing," said Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos Reid.

Eighty-nine per cent of Toronto residents polled blamed gangs for the shootings that have made gun crime a top issue in the federal election campaign while 78% cited drugs and drug trafficking.

Yes, Canadians have made the startling conclusion that damn fools on the bench and bigger fools in the Justice Ministry are to blame for multiple acts of violence being carried out by the same guys.  Shockingly, most did not think that a lack of sports facilities were contributory to the problem but instead laid the blame squarely on the Federal and Provincial catch-and-release program for violent, drug dealing assholes.

Awesome.

The Phantom