Chris Abani on TED – A Wonderful Look At Our Humanity

One of my favourite websites that I love to peruse is TED.com. It’s a site that shares with the public presentations given by some of today’s most insightful thinkers and gifted creators as a means to help spread knowledge and the sharing of ideas. Now who wouldn’t love a site that tries to accomplish that.

A few days ago, TED.com posted a new talk given by poet/author Chris Abani called “Telling stories of our shared humanity“. Don’t let the title fool you – this is a powerful presentation that will have you laughing and crying all in the span of 15 minutes. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Absurd Names For Children – Should We Intervene?

There was an interesting news report from New Zealand regarding a judge who placed a 9-year old girl in the custody of the court so that her name could be changed. So what was the name that fueled this bold move on the part of this family court judge?

Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii

Seriously, that’s the girl’s name. In the judge’s ruling over this custody case, Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

The Face Slap – Our Unspoken Tolerance Of Violence and Sexism

Yesterday, I read the sad news report about the mother in Chile who in a fit of rage killed her daughter because she refused to do homework her teachers assigned her for the summer break. And while my reaction was probably pretty similar to everyone else’s upon reading this news, this story also got me thinking about an unrelated issue that we as a society continue to tolerate or at least see no harm in. As the title of this entry implies, I’m referring here to the face slap.

It’s a scene most of us have witnessed numerous times in both films and TV shows, and probably for some even in real life. A man and woman are talking about something and then we see the woman’s face contort into a look of anger, hurt or a combination of both. This is soon followed by the woman giving the man a hard slap across the face, often causing the man’s head to turn off to one side that demonstrates the power behind the hit.

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Hello, Beijing – Hold the Dog, Please

While away on vacation, I heard a news report about the upcoming Beijing Games that, in addition to being responsible for causing a fair amount of head shaking, had me pondering about how the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2010 will be received. The report in question dealt with the announcement by Chinese officials that they will be putting in place a ban on the serving of dog meat, known in China as xiangrou (translation – “fragrant meat”), in all official Olympic venues during the Beijing Games next month. Apparently, like the 1988 Seoul Games, the Chinese Olympic officials want to make sure there won’t be any dog meat offerings on restaurant menus out of fear that it would upset the tourists. I don’t know about you, but I found this news rather disturbing.

Now to be clear, this isn’t about any issues regarding the farming or slaughter of dogs as a source of meat, nor is it yet another vegetarian’s attempt to demonstrate the evil behind eating animals since I’m not a vegetarian. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Windows Update KB951748 – Surprise! Microsoft Drops The Ball Again

This morning started off pretty much like every morning with part of my routine involving logging onto the internet to review emails and the latest news. But today, my computer decided we weren’t going to do that as it insisted there was no connection available to the Net. Naturally, I tested my connection and checked the network cabling and so forth. But nothing seemed amiss. Apparently my computer had decided it was tired of driving on the information superhighway. No bother – well, not a big bother I should say – as I simply set myself up at another terminal to work on today, and making a mental note to poke around more on the other one to figure out what’s wrong with it.

But as luck would have it, a clue flashed on the screen of this alternate terminal of what might be wrong with my computer. Windows Update was advising me that I had new updates to install on this terminal. New updates . . . . . hmm, I remembered installing updates yesterday on the other computer and that was the only modification made to it. So, I checked to see what exactly these updates were and one of them was Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Comic Book Action Flicks And The Father-Son Relationship

So my wife and I decided to go check out one of those action films that normally populate the summer blockbuster scene. While sitting in the darkened hall eating my priced-for-a-king popcorn, I couldn’t help but feel like we were just supposed to be amazed by the wild car chases and blood-drenching fight sequences and ignore the absurd, slap in your face character moments. Granted, I normally enjoy watching these kinds of films since sometimes I just “like watching things go boom” (my tried-and-true explanation to my wife whenever I pick up one of these films from the film rental shop). However, I’d still like to see characters whose motivations are paid more attention than one would give to a commercial selling toilet paper. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Beijing Olympics – A Sad Sign Of The Times

At the end of this past school year, I helped organize a school-wide “Olympics Day” where numerous sporting and recreational activities were set up with the various grades assigned to participate in the activities at different times during the day. As the school wanted to do something different this year, I suggested this activity as a way to celebrate this being an Olympic year. Of course, given how it was my suggestion, they knew this would mean they’d have some fresh blood helping to organize this year’s event. And so, as you can imagine, it was an easy sell.

And yet, while we were planning out this day of activities, I couldn’t help but feel some trepidation that we’d encounter resistance from some parents about the school carrying out an activity celebrating this Olympic year. After all, we’ve all seen and read about the protests that occurred in numerous countries during the Olympic Torch Relay, some being so hostile and dangerous to the torch relay runners like the one in Paris, where they actually had to extinguish the flame. Most of these protests focused on China, the host country for this year’s Summer Olympics, and their appalling human rights record as well as the on-going conflict over Tibet. However, the protests didn’t remain limited to these issues for very long as other protest groups soon joined in chanting against various issues ranging from China’s support for Sudan to the status of Taiwan. This dramatic rise across the globe of protesters using this Olympic event as a platform for political/social protest has even become a serious concern for Click to continue reading the rest of this entry