Ah, Canada. Land of the legal pot, legal gay marriage and enemy to the American way of life, as told by the American government. It’s really kind of funny if you look at it that way, it never occurred to me that Canada is sliding further away from the US in terms of policy and way of life. Check out this article (titled Canada Goes to Hell) from a San Francisco newspaper. It’s absolutely hilarious, it’s especially enlightening to see an American’s perspective on Canada, although I’m sure it’s a bit exaggerated, or rather I hope it is.

Here’s a bit:

After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens’ civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

Pretty good stuff, makes you feel good about being Canadian.

Some good stuff out there:

Link to a story about the worst child in the world, or at least a contender. You will read about this guy later at some point in his life, certainly. 11 year old boy is confined to his own street

Standing under 5ft but already a criminal veteran, with 13 convictions on top of 10 offences when he was under 10 and could not be charged

Wow.

And another good article about how roads would be safer if we removed all of the roadsigns, traffic lights, lane markers and curbs. Apparently those crazy Dutch are experimenting with these sorts of traffic calming measures. I do mean crazy, the engineer in the article is quoted while observing one of these busy intersections:

To my mind, there is one crucial test of a design such as this,” Monderman says. “Here, I will show you.” With that, Monderman tucks his hands behind his back and begins to walk into the square – backward – straight into traffic, without being able to see oncoming vehicles. A stream of motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians ease around him, instinctively yielding to a man with the courage of his convictions.

Man. That’s gotta be weird. I can sort of see it though, I know I would be driving a lot slower if there was no indication that someone was going to go through an intersection or not. Pretty neat idea, and they show that accidents and fatalities go way down at these intersections.

I recently had a little bout of what we will refer to as “intestinal conflict”. Not to bring down the level of writing on this website (any further), I will try to avoid any further reference to that. So, anyway it seemed appropriate that I post a few of these:

Here’s an article about a professor who writes songs to help her students remember key facts about diseases. Some of the “highlights” are:
“Leprosy” (sung to the tune of “Yesterday” by The Beatles)
Leprosy,
Bits and pieces falling off of me,
But it isn’t the toxicity,
It’s just neglect of injury.

And who could forget….

“Herpes Simplex 1 and 2” sung to the Simon and Garfunkel tune, “Sounds of Silence”:
Hello herpes our old friend.
Will be with us ’til the end.
‘Cause the virus softly creeping,
Left its genes while we were sleeping.

That helped a lot, I feel much better.

I invite you to post your own disease-related ditties in the comments section.

Not that I want the blog to become political at all, but I found this stuff pretty funny. Apparently since Bush won the Canadian Immigration website has been swamped with traffic from the States. Here’s an article on CNET about it. The article also covers some of the more humourous websites that offer advice one way or another. Here’s a good “review” of Canada on an anti-Bush website: