I took Melanie to see Wicked last night and was very impressed. What a wonderful story! The music composition, the incredible talent and just plain beautiful harmony... It was amazing.

The tickets aren't cheap, but so worth it. You will never see anything quite like it.

If there's anyone who's opinion I routinely turn to in matters of Canadian national unity, it's the CBC's Rex Murphy. Regardless of the topic, if it's politics, he's got something to say and it's always absolutely brilliant. The following is a snippet of his closing remarks on The National last night:

What is the Parliament of Canada doing declaring the Québécois a nation? Has that not been the principal aim of the Parti qubécois and the Bloc, the separatists, since their formation? The idea behind this motion has been a mischief since the train was put on the track by Michael Ignatieff in his leadership bid, and as it gained momentum with the Bloc's embrace and Stephen Harper's too-clever response last week, it has become more divisive by the day, igniting the call now by the premier of British Columbia to go one more step and incorporate all aboriginal peoples in another group nation.

...

The House of Commons, the House of Commons of Canada, should be underlining only one nation, Canada. We are all its citizens regardless of height, colour, province, language, history, religion or politics. Canada is the nation, and the biggest quarrel I have with this motion tonight is that our parliamentarians seem to have the courage to declare a bit, a slice, a portion of the country a nation when they are timid about asserting and constantly asserting and proudly asserting that Canada is the nation, and all Canadians now are already and deeply a part of it.

You can read the entire transcript on CBC's The National

I have no idea what the article is saying, but Shawna is i-famous in Korea!

I was having trouble articulating this earlier, but I think that I understand why now. Canada is an emotional topic for me, especially when it comes to its founding peoples. We're more than a country, we're a nation with a rich history -- and it includes Quebec.

More than just the province that tries to separate every few years, Quebec is a founding pillar of Canada. No, this isn't a technical term and no, it's not something that can be really quantified, but consider he following:

• "The Hockey Sweater" ("Le chandail de hockey")
• Poutine
• The Van Doos
• Pierre Trudeau
• The Montreal Canadiens
• "Joie de Vivre"
• The Plains of Abraham
• Carnaval de Québec
• Je me souviens
• The FLQ
• Schwartz's (yes, Wikipedia even covers the famous delicatessen)
• Bonne-homme de neige

This is Our Canada, the Good and the Bad, and it's all from the same place. Their history is our history. They've given us a world-renowned military tradition, amazing food, and an attitude that helped to shape this country for what it is: one of tolerance and humility. The fact that a majority of every party in the house would support an obvious step toward removing Quebec from this family cuts me very deep and I'm not sure I'll ever forgive them.

Sadly, this is no surprise at all. Recently in the Washington Post, Laurie David, the producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" published a letter regarding Exxon Mobil's terrible track record with, wait for it: The National Science Teachers Association:

"Science a la Joe Camel"

by: Laurie David 26 November 2006

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school.

And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

The education organization also hosts an annual convention -- which is described on Exxon Mobil's Web site as featuring "more than 450 companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching enhancements." The company "regularly displays" its "many . . . education materials" at the exhibition. John Borowski, a science teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free corporate lesson plans.

Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto.

"The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission," Borowski says. "The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts."

An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: "Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future."

So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy.

It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day.

As for Exxon Mobil -- which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions -- this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years.

While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework.

Laurie David, Producer of "An Inconvenient Truth"

I hear that it's snowing in Vancouver today, while it's been nearly tshirt weather all week on this end of the country... tee hee.

Can't... look... away.... it hurts to watch....

Billy Idol has a MySpace page.... and it sucks, in a way that only Billy Idol can suck.

I just got a call from another recruiter, that makes FOUR this week. It would seem that the best thing to do when looking for a job is to find one first :-)

Seriously though, the job market here is pretty good for IT. I've never felt so wanted (professionally) in my life.

I've decided that it's ok to post the name of my current employer in my blog since it will eventually make its way into my resume. Obviously office gossip etc won't be in here but I see no problem with the mere association.

Bodog is awesome. We're on the 15th floor of a 15-floor building (the building actually has a 13th floor!) and we have the entire floor to ourselves. There is a giganimous kitchen, a workout room, a shower room and a pop machine that sells cans of Pepsi for $0.50 :-) They even have a reasonably-sized recycling section in the kitchen complete with glass, plastic and cardboard.

While there is no Zuppa's to speak of, there is a crappy sandwich place in the basement, a Subway down the street, Panzerotto Pizza a little further and, get this, a commercial complex 5minutes away complete with Loblaws (groceries), a Wendy's and a Milestones... not to mention Future Shop, Staples and a movie theatre. Sure, it's North York Station, but it's not too isolated. (Beats the job in Missasauga... ew).

The people I work with are very cool. Laid-back and excited in a very Vancouver-ish, dot.com boom way. I work in an office with a very pretty girl and we share a great big window with a reasonable view of the smog. My workstation is a superawesome Athlon64 dualcore with 1GB of ram and TWO 19" monitors... running Gentoo Linux of course.

There are a few hiccups though. The company is using a lot of Microsoft products, the proprietary nature of which is wrecking havoc with my Linux toys. Just getting the messenger service working has been disturbingly convoluted... and don't get me started on email.

I'm happy here though. The people are cool, the office relaxing, the job reasonably complex. ...did I mention that they have a Vancouver office too? Yeah, I like it here.

Save the cheerleader, save the world.

That is all.