Does anyone remember the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise?  Looking past the incredible predictability of the “film” and concentrating on the flashier stuff leads one to notice things like advertisements in a future world that scan your eyes and display information relevant to you or computer terminals that are entirely interactive using a complex array of hand gestures.  It seems that perhaps just that kind of technology may be going mobile and perhaps within only a decade.

I’m looking forward to becoming a pseudo-cyborg for a small fee.  Sasktel’s “superhuman package” should be coming out soon.

On the lead of section 13, I decided to take the political compass test.  I remember being over on the left hand side and up near the middle on this chart just a few years ago.  Over a relatively short period of time, I have moved quite decidedly to the purist libertarian position on the chart.

Cool huh?  Well maybe not but I think it’s cool.

Also, there’s this.  Umm….well I saw it over at Canadian Cynic but I post this you tube video here for your…viewing pleasure?  Really, I think I need some one to come up with an explanation for this.

So it’s been…a long time since I posted last.  Long story short, I’m in a puddle of stress (at least I hope that’s stress) because I have been trying for over two weeks now to get a big schwack of cash together to purchase a semi-truck and gravel trailer.  I finally have gotten that together and I’m getting my truck on Monday but boy has it ever been a trip through hell.

So since I have been off and about for so long, here’s a little gem I thought I would post about.  Some one thinks they’re being funny…when they’re just actually being really stupid.  Check it out.

But amid the collapse of the global financial system, raging populism and a near-crisis in health-care, it seems that one group of Americans has mobilized to ask POTUS the tough questions: Stoners. Yep, that’s right, in a rare display of motivated activism, stoners managed to make one of a question about marijuana legalization one of the most popular.

…

(And just to pre-empt all those people about to write me and say that it is a fair issue – yes, there are people legitimately interested in the potential economic and health benefits of weed, but c’mon! We all know most of the voters were college kids in pyjamas.)

So I think athat warrants a response.  Here goes.

A rare moment of motivated activism?  I can chuckle at the tongue in cheek remark not because it’s witty or even slightly humorous (it’s not either of those in the least) but because it’s kind of funny to see a writer of even slight note stumble over such ignorance.  Perhaps you’ve missed all the pot head entrepreneurs out there or the multitude of professional pot smokers wearing suits but too afraid to speak out about it because people like you are liable to marginalize them.  Perhaps you have missed the world wide coordinated marches and protests or gigantic annual events such as hemp fest.

Perhaps you’ve been in the dark while people have put on cross country tours and put together national and international legitimate organizations such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, NORML, The Marijuana Policy Project and others.  Perhaps you’ve been stuffing your face with burgers and washing that stuff down with scotch as pot heads have published printed magazines distributed around the world, created political parties and organizations or have done such things as win 14 gold medals.  Granted that gold medallist is a lot like the people who dress in suits I mentioned earlier but I gotta say, he doesn’t seem unmotivated to me.

See, I’m not a pot head and I used to make the stupid and asinine jokes like you did in your March 26th post on the gaggle.  It was a few years ago that I decided to really look into the whole issue with some conviction when I found out about a Canadian being extradited from our nation on what seemed to me to be pretty flimsy justification.  I’m not a college kid and I’m not in pyjamas.  I’m about to start my own business and I look at the marijuana issue as one that is very important whether you consider it to be a freedom, financial or fun issue.  I don’t sit in my mothers basement.  to be honest, I can’t stand the woman so if I did, I probably would be stoned as often as possible but even then, that’s not what this is about and to brush a bunch of people who voted legalization questions into positions of note on the web as a bunch of irresponsible twits with nothing better to so is incredibly insulting.  Course…I didn’t vote in Obama’s online thing because I had better crap to do and I’m not an American but there you go.  What really gets me about that witless remark is that it’s all blamed on a bunch of people with computers.  For some reason, it’s ok to say that NORML just got a bunch of unmotivated stoners to vote in an online poll but there’s no mention of fanatical Christian organizations that have tens of millions of dollars behind them and hoards of frothing supporters that would jump at the chance to vote the baby “murder” issue into the top spot in every category possible.  Maybe they just don’t like asking black people questions but I know the gun owners sure do and they’re organized too.  Well, granted they ask questions after they’re done shooting but you don’t think a few of them have access to the web as well? Face it, stoners have a powerful and organized lobby and it’s anything if not motivated.

By the way, Christians aren’t all racists (most of them are loving toward all people) and gun owners aren’t irresponsible.  Most of them are probably people I would call before the police.

The bottom line for me is that it’s important and much more important than people like you seem to think it is.  If you don’t think the cost is important, you should look south of the American/Mexican border and see that people are dieing there every day because of an escalated gang war that has crippled a failed state.  In Canada, we’re a world away and even here we get word of Mexican drug gangs that have influence on the violence that takes place in some of our nation’s cities.  I imagine it’s probably a little more familiar in places like Sao Paulo or Houston.

In the end, your flippant remarks are neither ingenious or unique.  They’re just insulting.  The next time you see an office worker, realize that there’s probably a one in ten chance that they smoke pot.  Pot smokers are not unmotivated nor are they deserving of being addressed as a bunch of neer do wells that are likely to cause massive couch cushion failure.  Pot smokers are just other people like you and I and they walk the streets among us just as every one else does.  In short, smarten up!

Ever seen South Park on television?  The masters of satire are responsible for the following collection of comical utterances.

It seems a Canadian was recently denied entry to the United States and threatened with potentially being prosecuted for further attempted entry should he ever try to market his products south of the border ever again.

Of course this type of thing is ridiculous but it’s certainly not even policy at the border.  It’s a border guard gone kinda nuts with assumed power and it’s an unfortunate event.  Between bouts of confiscating tasty beef jerky from travellers, thus guy obviously wanted to exert his authority over some one he disagreed with politically I suppose.  That’s pretty bad form and grossly unprofessional but what do you expect of people with power and authority that is in large part unaccountable?

Beyond exerting authority that was not his to exert, the border guard definitely doesn’t understand how free trade works.  The Canadian going to trade shows is some one creating economic activity.  that flows both ways but if ignorant customs officers like the dolt who caused this debacle had their way, it’s obvious that Canadians and Americans would just never be allowed to trade amongst themselves.  I’m kinda sure that if that were the case, there wouldn’t be many jobs to steal on either side of the border.

Now despite the fact that I don’t like the military and wouldn’t have a problem with anyone boycotting such, I can still admire the motivation one has for joining up.  To go overseas and risk one’s life for something one can believe in is an admirable trait.  While I think perhaps a devotion to the military and one’s country is misplaced, it’s workable in today’s society and idealists like me will just have to wait on a no government utopia for now.

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are risking their lives for what they and many others believe to be freedom.  I guess the idea is that by fighting against forces of evil in Afghanistan, (AKA the Taliban) we can help a country and people with medieval traditions emerge into the 21st century and become more like us in the west.  We like our lifestyle after all and we tend to look at those living in environments of violence and fear as being unfortunate and no doubt they certainly are.  It’s only natural that we would want to deliver big bundles of freedom, peace and stability to people who don’t have it.  that’s just a basic kind of human compassion and currently, we’re trying desperately as a nation to express that propensity for compassion through our military.  In many minds, the greatest gift we can give to people like those who live in Afghanistan is a lifestyle much like our own.

Of course, that doesn’t often work and in my eyes, it’s a fools errand.  The previous web link there will lead you to a story of a young Afghan student.  he happens to be favourable toward woman’s right and for downloading literature that favours this position, he was convicted of a crime in an Afghan court that did not give him an opportunity for any type of defence.  After being sentenced to death for simply being in favour of women’s rights, an international response was sparked and his sentence was commuted to a mere 20 years in prison, again without any opportunity for the man or his council to present a defence to the court.

Are you disgusted?  I know I am.

Here’s the thing.  Real change comes from within and that applies to a person just as well as it does a society.  I called the mission in Afghanistan a fool’s errand because I think that it’s an excercise in futility.  It was and still is ridiculous to assume that you can show up in a society of deep routed tradition and religious social structure and simply assume that the people there will want what you have to offer which is from a radically different culture.  It is completely foolish to think that a society’s values and ethical base can be changed simply by replacing a government.

It’s nice that schools have been built and women can go there and that the country has experienced some improvement under a new government but the fact is that the social base is still set in terrible and backwards traditions.  There are spots of progress and those should not be ignored but a society should be allowed to evolve on its own.

Poverty breeds ignorance and violence.  It’s a constant that can be observed as easily in any Canadian city as it can in the poorest regions fo the world.  The best way to ensure social progress around the world is to make attempts at helping economies to progress.  The more apparent opportunities become. the more likely people are to seek them out and leave backward obstructionist attitudes behind.

112 Canadian soldiers have died so far for a nation that seeks to execute those who download pro-feminist material from the web.  Countless others are treated terribly by the Afghani justice system which is fed in large part by tax dollars from western nations.  I honestly wish they had never been put in a position where they ricked such a death for such a place.