Hope For Future Lawyers

Alberto Gonzales spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him.

To make matters worse for Gonzales, additional students came into the room, wearing black cowls and carrying a simple banner, written on a sheet.



Fortunately for him, it was a brief speech... followed by a panel discussion that basically ripped his argument a new asshole.

And, as one of the people on the panel said,

"When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough.

In light of this, I'm proud of the very civil civil disobedience that was shown here today." - David Cole, Georgetown University Law Professor

Too bad that this act of civil disobedience will do nothing. I didn’t even notice it on any news networks other than CNN online. Not sure if it aired on CBC or Global either.

The irony is in the fact that George W. Bush ran on a platform of “restoring ethics and dignity”. Instead, we got wiretapping, which may or may not be legal, may or may not be constitutional, but which was denied to have been done, and then, when it was shown to be happening, the response was, "Hey, Clinton did it."

Where is the ethics and dignity in that?

[294 words]

Of Modern Man

Man has been defined in various ways. He has been called a social animal. But a simple description could be that man is a complex of physical and emotional needs.

All living animals have needs such as shelter, food, water, sex, and protection from th environment. When man existed at a primitive level all of his needs were very easily fulfilled. Primitive man would appear to have been a much happier and more contented person than modern man, perhaps for the very simple reason that there was no confusion in his appraisal of his needs, and therefore his approach to their satisfaction could be direct and immediate. Certainly primitive man did not have all the traumas, stresses, and psychological illnesses that appear to accompany human life throughout the span of its existence today.

How has it come about that primitive man could be happy in such adverse environmental conditions, while facing extreme conditions of life where every moment of survival was a victory over his environment and his foes, whereas modern man, with all the conveniences of life, a life which has been made so easy to live that very often the minimum of physical activity is all that is needed, and where almost everything that he needs is at hand, or can be easily acquired without much personal effort or danger is it that in such an existence we find man unable to live in peace either with himself or with his surroundings.

Probably the reason is that in the past, modern men have required something to define their lives. Normally this would be their job.

"Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives."

In the past, men have been able to define their lives easily. They were the warrior. The hunter-gatherer. They went to war, their fathers went to war, and their sons will go to war. The reasons for going to war in the past were obvious. It was to protect your way of life.

Modern man is making a regression into an animal. There is no place in society as nature dictates for a man that cooks, cleans, and watches the children. They are bred around the premise of the hunter-gatherer instinct and that is where they will thrive.

"How can I get married? I'm a 30-year-old boy."

Not only this, but we are a generation of men familiar with the idea that our father left us and our father never went to college. Our fathers were failures. How can we define ourselves with nothing to model in a world where nothing is how the male psyche would allow it. We are not able to grow in a traditional sense because of this.

"We are a generation of men raised by women."

We are a generation of men raised by women. A generation of men defined by our job, and a generation of men in which our life is our great depression.


Note: I drew most of my quotes from Fight Club, a movie that helps illustrate my point and from which I drew my inspiration.

[522 words]

A Race That Doesn't Evolve

From the beginning of time, it has been legal and ethical to kill your enemies, including civilians, during the duration of a war. Other than simply being killed, many were tortured, raped, brutalized, and made slaves. In today’s society, it is being questioned if killing civilians during a war is morally just, especially when the war is purportedly for liberating them from a totalitarian government.

Statistically speaking, the problem seems to be getting worse in times when it should be the opposite. Logically, human beings should become more compassionate as we mature and evolve, whereas the opposite is the truth. Using statistics from wars in modern times it can be see that civilian body counts for WW1 were about 5%, WW2 50%, rising steadily until the recent Iraq War in which over 95% of all casualties can be calculated to be civilians.

War was never intended to be just and peaceful and modern media has sheltered us into thinking it isn't so bad. Civilians will be lost to war, especially in an age where nuclear missiles and atomic bombs pose a common threat.

After the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the idea was brought up that war should be between a state’s armed forces, and not including the civilians residing in the state. This idea, again brought up again in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 resulted in it being illegal to kill civilians or punish whole populations. This is very significant when it comes to today’s issues. As a result of the illegitimacy of killing civilians, terrorists, in the Middle East and all around the world, hide among neighborhoods of civilians- where it is impossible for the armed forces to invade, by law. In combination with this, even though a community may not be involved in war attacks, they may or may not be supporting it; supplying such things as munitions, food or shelter. In these cases, is it not just to kill civilians? Civilians who give aid to those who would wreak havoc upon our lives and society?

Another issue in wars today is the forced conscription of men, women, and children. All usually end up being brutally raped by the enemy. Children as young as 10 and even younger, quite often end up being forced into warfare. In a world where an AK-47 can be purchased for the price of a chicken and put into the hands of a child, or a child can be forcibly married off to a soldier at the age of 10, we have to ask ourselves, "Why are we not stopping this from happening?"


In wartime, whole populations suffer famine, or disease, and a poverty that will affect the nation for decades to come. Psychological damage can last for the remainder of lives. 110 million mines litter the earth- waiting for an unfortunate soul to stumble upon them. Up to 30 percent of landmine victims are under the age of 15. “Ethnic Cleansing” and racial supremacy isn’t that uncommon in our society.

As stated, there is a much bigger issue here. Civilians die at war not because of nuclear missiles, or even indecisive governments. Civilians die at war, because there is war in the first place. The killing of innocent people during times of war is inevitable.

I don’t support the killing of civilians, but I accept it as part of war. The issue that today’s governments must look into is the basic values we teach our children every day. To use words, not our fists. To mind our differences and to understand the reason behind actions in order to solve problems. The ideal world is one which in everyone acts peacefully and resolves their issues with each other verbally, rather than resorting to violence. The desired outcome is more easily achieved than the human perceives; it simply takes patience, cooperation, understanding, and the collective group’s wish for peace.

[649 words]

Alpine In The Okanagan

The Okanagan is famous for a number of things, be it the wine, the warmth, the shopping, or the lake, it has everything anybody could want. Luckily, the winter is not a boring time at all in the Okanagan with the plentiful, prime alpine hills around the valley.

First and foremost is obviously Big White, about an hour out from the local Kelowna area and recently voted the number 7 ski resort in the world. Why is this place such a great choice?

First off, it gets about 24 feet of powder per season and the average daytime temperature is a comfortable -3 Celsius, cold enough for the snow, and warm enough for you. It's Canada's largest ski-in/out resort with hotels, townhouses, condominiums, log cabins, budget units and hostels that make up over 15,000 on-mountain beds.

Big White is also made to be as affordable as possible. Booking an accommodation will qualify you for discounts on lift tickets, rentals, and lessons. Season passes are also cheaper in advance of the skiing season.

Variety is also one of the reasons for this resort. They have 118 patrolled runs, groomed runs nightly and green runs accessed from every lift. The mountain has runs suited for skiers and snowboarders of all skill levels, from the beginner hills to the expert double black diamonds, there is sure to be a run to suit your needs.

If you haven't, be sure to check this amazing resort out. I'm sure you won't be disappointed. The season tends to run from November to April depending on conditions and the hill itself is simply amazing.

Big White is under the same ownership as the nearby Silver Star hill and packages for both can be purchased. Other things to consider would be the rapid, continual expansion plans for Big White in developing itself it's own community including a school, making it clear that investment opportunities may be found here as well.

I hope you found this informative if you did not know it already. I recently took up snowboarding after not having been to a ski hill in 6 years. Obviously it was fun since I'll be going Friday again :) I used some information from the Big White website for statistical information and helping myself along if that was okay.

[382 words]

I Hate Being Sick

My life comprises (sadly?) of only a few things. School, work, girlfriend, sleep, computer, and possibly a new venture into snowboarding. This blog will follow the highlights of my escapades at school, in which I attend Okanagan College. The blog is for my PCom class.

I woke at about 10:30 due to having an intense sinus headache, normal headache, stuffy nose, etc, standard cold symptoms. Then after my normal ritual of eating a little, washing up, dressing, and poking around CNN/Castanet/AlJazeera/SA I headed off to my first class.

My Systems Analysis and Design course is rather boring at the moment. It seems we will be learning DB stuff, such as the usage of SQL.

Networking follows shortly afterwards (a mere 10 minutes after, in the same room), and is definitely an improvement since it seems to pique my interest. I am rather interested in good networking and how to create it, but a little of the pre-actually doing stuff portion of the course is rather mundane (repeating what operating systems use TCP/IP). It would also be nice in the future to get my own home network working properly which will probably involve buying a router that isn't awful. It's nice to be able to (hopefully) apply things learnt at school to real world applications at the moment, even though I laugh at the fact that Windows XP will network everything for you in a few mere mouseclicks.

I had a 2 hour break, handed in my Math homework from the class I missed this morning by sleeping in (sick), and went to see some friends before I headed off to my PCom class.

PCom is a class in which 50% of our mark is a Resume/Cover Letter and blog. Sadly enough, I already have an ok resume (which I am ok with but wouldn't mind another opinion on what could be improved on it), and I already write a blog on another website (Xanga) but it's more of a personal rant than professional(-ish) blog like this one. The class seems to focus more on the basics of writing (clarity, keeping readers enticed, etc) which is not really what I need to be working on. I quite like writing but I don't have the time for it or the imagination to do such things.

I then went to my SA+D lab which involved learning the basics of SQL*Plus. It lasted about 30 minutes including the 10 minutes that it took to get SQL working and messing around on the SA forums (http://forums.somethingawful.com). It seems to be a simple DB program but I've heard it has much, much greater usages than what we've just used it for. However, I don't know anything about the program and I hope that by the end of the semester I will have a decent idea.

This blog might be okay after all. Hopefully this semester is better and more interesting/fun than the last.

[487 words]