IE 8

This week all the folks using Internet Explorer 6 had problems with one of my posts. It would take down the whole blog, nothing would load, or at least that is what I was told since I use Firefox and Safari and they were working just fine. (Being a Mac person from way back I don't consort with the dark side... "come to the dark side Luke, come to the dark side...." ;o) )
Now M$ is coming out with IE 8 which hopefully will be a little more forgiving than its predecessors. To market this new browser they came out with this ad, which they promptly pulled after people complained.
Now besides the fact that the humour has the subtlety of something my 13 year old students would think up, there is also the underlying message that it's OK to go to disgusting porn sites, because now you can hide it from your wife and family. What kind of selling point is that? No wonder people complained enough for them to take it off. What is remarkable is that nobody at M$ saw that before using it. Putting a positive spin on it, they even had the chutzpah to crow about how they listened to their customers. Two inches of cheek all over...

O M G I G P Internet Explorer 8 Puke Vomit Girl

Trying again

It seems that the earlier versions of IE no longer do my blog.... I usually use Scribefire, a Firefox add-on, to write and post my blog but for this post I'm using Blogger's blogging engine. Now I'll see if it is Blogger or Scribefire that is having problems. Please leave a message if you see it OK using IE 6 or earlier. Thanks.

Blogger or M$ Explorer???

It seems that either blogger doesn't like Explorer with my blog or Explorer has figured out that I am a Macintosh person and has decided to boycott my blog. I'm posting this to see if it can be seen by Explorer. Since I use Firefox or Safari I can't really tell. So if you can see this post let me know.é

Let the bells ring and the banners fly...

Let the bells ring and the banners fly, I'm done, I'm finally done. All my orals, compositions and exams are finished, corrected and the marks finally entered into the school's data base... and all that despite the fact that they cut off two days from the deadline about two weeks before the end. So much for planning. So unless there is a f**k up at their end, my endless days of correction are finished. Yahooo!

Bring the man home.

I was just reading a news story from the CBC about the Mr. Abdelrazik, a canadian, who has been stranded in Sudan for the last six years and living in the Canadian Embassy for the last year all because the Canadian government under our right wing reactionary PM, Harper, refuses to give him his travel papers. As a reason they give the fact that he is on a UN terrorist watch list list even though the RCMP and CSIS (our clownishly paranoid spy agency. kind of like a CIA wanna-be) have cleared him of having any terrorist links. (They were probably the ones that put him on the list in the first place. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty)
Today the Federal Court of Canada has told the Canadian Government that by refusing to repatriate him, they are denying him his rights as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights in the Constitution. Otherwise saying they are breaking the law, pretty much as "Bushie" was doing during his mandate. These right wing rednecks are really not great believers in the rule of law. The court has given them thirty days to comply, and what do you think their answer was... "The Department of Justice will study the judgement." How much do you want to bet they'll appeal and stall it in the courts until they get booted out of parliament. Canadians should be ashamed of having elected such a bunch of right wing reactionary morons.

Mr. Prime Minister, your role is to uphold the Canadian Constitution and the rule of law. If you can't do anything else right can you at least try to do that.

A traveling we will go...

I haven't blogged in a while, being too busy and tired. (I sometimes feel that I should be paid by the kilometre.) We just got back from our annual class trip to Washington. Yes I know it's a h*ll of a long way from home but Boston and New York are taken by the other grades so off we go to Washington. This year we left on a Tuesday morning at 7 am and arrived in Philadelphia in the afternoon where we visited the historical city. We then went to the hotel and the next morning we left or Washington. Having arrived there we then visited the museums (Smithsonian and Holocaust) and walked around the monuments (Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Jefferson, and the war memorials) and streets of the city. The Americans sure know how to build monumental buildings in white marble. After three days we finally got back on the bus and after having driven all night, (realizing that I'm getting way too old to be trying to sleep on a bus) we finally arrived back at school. The trip went well and the kids loved it. What impressed the students the most you ask? Well the Holocaust Museum and the war memorials (Vietnam and Korean) as well as the Lincoln memorial were probably their favourites as well as the Medieval Banquet they participated in. The girls were all sighing over the Blue Knight who was our section's champion. The boys however were much more interested in the sword battles on horseback. ;o)

Earth Day

As well as celebrating my birthday tomorrow, it is also time to celebrate our mother earth. This picture, taken by Apollo 16, illustrates the beauty and fragility of our small blue planet. Let's take care of her, since this small blue ball is the only one we have.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

Arbeit Macht Frei

I haven't written in a while because I've been on a school trip to Europe with the students. We started at Paris and then went to Lucerne in Switzerland, through Liechtenstein to Innsbruck in Austria and finally on to Munich.

The final day in Munich we visited Dachau and it was this visit which marked us the most. We had decided to take the students there because we wanted them to see first hand man's inhumanity to man. In Canada we have never really had any first hand experience with that kind of systematic cruelty and barbarity and the students only read about it in their history books. Now they were able to witness it first hand and were able to get a feeling about what it was. How did the students take it? Well if their silence and thoughtfulness after the visit are any indication, it really hit home. I hope that it is a lesson they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
I consider myself to be a pragmatic, down to earth type of person, not much given to flights of fancy, but that day I admit I felt something tangible as I walked through the camp and the crematoria. It was a beautiful sunny day but there was a pall of darkness that seemed to hover over the camp. As I walked I could feel the miasma of human misery that permeated the atmosphere and I know in my heart that it will never be lifted as long as human memory remains. What also stuck me was the fact that this could have also happened here in Canada. Given the right circumstances of anarchy and a charismatic leader we could have also succumbed to the dark side. It was a very chilling realization, let me tell you. All that is needed for evil to take root is for a good man to shut his eyes.
Here are a couple of photos.

Dachau 1933-1945