Religious Wars

This week we had a gem of a story where a girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, while her family refused to seek medical help since they felt praying was the better option. Doctors figure she was probably suffering for around 30 days with nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite, and weakness. And these morons waited around on their fucking knees praying instead of taking a trip to the hospital. Now I'm all for praying to whomever you like, whenever you want. I figure it can't hurt to have a little faith and hope and if you pray and see the doctors then the praying can't do any damage to your chances. But when you rely on prayer alone in a routine case of diabetes you're simply retarded.

It seems that praying for health is something that most religions have in common. And I have a new theory that we could use this to do a study and find out which religion is right. If we do a survey asking questions about prayer for health (in absence of medical aid of course) we should be able to find out which religion has the best success rate. This high success rate should point to the one true God(s). At this point we could abolish all other religions and finally unite the planet! The only hole I can find in this theory is that if the people being surveyed were too stupid to see a doctor they may not be able to fill out the questionnaire. A planet without religious wars would be a better place to be.

Dion Grows a Set

Over the past few weeks the big news in Canadian politics has been about the Cadman affair [cbc.ca].  Sure this isn't anywhere near as exciting or expensive as the US primaries are, and there's no sex with hookers either so it's a wonder anyone in Canada even cares.

What is there to care about? Well it seems that two days before a vote in May 2005 the Conservative's offered dying independent MP Chuck Cadman a bribe to vote against the minority Liberals.  This was a confidence vote and the house was split with Cadman having the power to swing the vote either way and bring down the government. Cadman never took the bribe, the Liberal government survived through the vote, and Cadman died two months afterwards.

Now we have the upcoming release of a new book written by Tom Zytaruk titled Like A Rock: The Chuck Cadman Story. When interviewing Stephen Harper for the book it was discovered that Harper knew there was an offer of money to Cadman, but claims it was to "...replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election". This has since turned into offering him money which would be used to run his campaign for re-election as a Conservative MP. I call bullshit on that since I don't imagine a dying man who was down to his two final months would spend one of those months on a campaign and the final one in office. And if he was willing to do it then it's pretty fucking silly to offer to pay for it since you know he's dying! So the best case outcome of this excuse is that one of these two individuals is stupid?

The real meat of this whole affair comes from the fact that Harper, who is now the Prime Minister if you're not up to date on canadian politics, is suing the leader of the Liberal party for making accusations about the bribe.  Like a good opposition leader should do Stephan Dion has questioned this offer/bribe. But the response from Harper is a lawsuit! Canadians have been waiting for months for Dion to grow a set of balls and actually be an opposition to the minority government.  Now that he has, there's a lawsuit for doing his fucking job! They will argue about the technicalities of making accusations in the House versus making them public but in the end I'm upset that just as something got juicy with Canadian politics it's been squashed. We know Harper has shutdown the flow of information from the government to the people by cutting off media access. But going so far as suing the opposition for doing their job is simply disgusting.

New Product Idea: Helbans

Last week there was news[globeandmail] that an Ontario judge has ruled that the law prohibiting anyone from riding a motorcycle without a helmet does not violate rights to religious freedom. Of course this is mostly common sense, but it seems a Sikh man had received a ticket and fought that charge on those grounds.  So the judge rightfully ruled that the society gains from possible reduced health care costs overrule the religious right. I think the best part of the real story is that this individual held a test at a race track to disprove the view of the Crown that the turban would fall off at high speeds. The Globe and Mail reports that this test was performed under the auspices of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. That simply confirms that this guy has already wasted too much public money.

This is all well and good, but since I figure it's his head and I couldn't find a way for me to experience greater injury if we collided, I thought there must be a way for this guy to experience the feeling of the open air running through his ..... umm .... turban.  I guess it's not the classic image of open air bike riding, but who am I to judge that?  I figure that we need a waiver which can be signed by anyone who would like to ride without a helmet. This would absolve the rest of us from health care costs should the inevitable happen. After further thought I wondered if it would perhaps have the side benefit of leaving space in the health care system for those of us smart enough to avoid motorcycle riding completely. I've sent a letter to my MPP with my proposal and I'll let you know if I receive a response, but I've come up with a better plan anyway.

This better plan includes a way for me to make money as opposed to simply saving public money, and that's much better for me.  I figure it should be possible to create a turban that is a helmet, or a helban if you will.  I now have to do some research to determine if it's possible to meet the safety standards[wikipedia] of a motorcycle helmet as well as the religious requirements[sikhnet] of the turban.

Family Tree of Convenience

Since it's tax season taxes have been a hot topic at the cube farm. Being a group of geeks we're always looking for ways to use the advantages of the system. Since our country allows gay marriage we've always talked of the possibility of having gay marriages of convenience which could be used by friends or roommates to maximize returns for tax season.  Infact, if this blog started two years ago that topic would have been the first post.  But this week there was a new idea, the incestuous gay marriage of convenience! In this arrangement Papa can pass his wealth to Junior, avoiding the estate tax that wealthy people seem to loath.