Musings of the Museless

*sigh* I’m a little disappointed that Canada ISN’T the smart little sister, but still the dumb young kid brother…

Official report of Canada ’spy’ coins not true: U.S.

I gotta say, I’m a little proud (and a tad weirded out) when I read this story:

Pocketful of Espionage: Beware the Spy Coin
Bet the US never thought we had it in us, hey?  Kind of like when you find out your little sister’s been reading your diary and replacing that hair you put across page 42 to detect intruders…

Now, I must go to Tim Horton’s and spend whatever change I have… can’t be too careful.

Ah-HA! I previously wrote on the contract dispute between Rogers and Aliant, and how a misplaced (or maybe intentionally placed by Aliant but overlooked by Rogers) comma means that Aliant has the right to terminate the lease Rogers has on thousands of telephone poles in New Brunswick.
Well now Rogers is hitting back – en francais. In this Globe and Mail story, they argue that the French version of the contract does not have the same punctuation and conveys the meaning they (Rogers) thought the contract said in the first place. The contract was originally created and then translated, but each contract was individually signed by both parties.

My thought – if the contracts say different things when they are supposed to be the same, wouldn’t BOTH now be declared void? My other thought – how the heck do lawyers sleep at night? :)

Well, seems everywhere you turn Newfoundland is making National News for something or another. My basis of this post started over on Fark, where they picked up the Fight Club that got busted up in Corner Brook. Teens are getting more and more dumb, aren’t they? But even dumber are the people who choose to comment on Fark. Even if you don’t know where a place is, there is nothing preventing a person with at least four fingers and an internet connection (which the commenters obviously have) from finding out NF is not part of Europe, and we don’t say aboot. :)

There was also the recent Nissan ad for the Bonavista edition of the Nissan X-Trail that’s got some Newfoundlanders up in arms. (A search of YouTube can find the ad for you if you haven’t seen it). To be perfectly honest, I don’t see anything wrong with the television ad.. in fact, I find it somewhat hilarious. A major bone of contention seems to be the fact that the actor is from Cape Breton and not a Newfoundlander, which is silly (really, they’re just Newfoundlanders we kicked off the West Coast, right? :). It doesn’t seem to be putting down – the seller knows what he’s talking about in terms of the car’s features and fine points. He’s the one in charge of the situation. It may not be exactly how people from Bonavista talk, but that’s not the point. The point is that we have an accent that should be celebrated… and used to sell SUVs:). But a local car dealer, City Honda (who, IMO, do great radio ads), has retaliated.

In general, Newfoundlanders get too touchy over these things sometimes. I have my “Newfoundland boiling points”… don’t ever make the mistake of placing Newfoundland in the Maritime in front of ME. But why can’t we be proud

I’ve admitted in the past to being a sort of grammar fanatic (you may not get that from my posts though). I was thrilled by this Globe and Mail article today, ‘A basic rule of punctation’. For those of you who can’t get the story or aren’t interested in reading it, it can be summed up in the next few sentences. Rogers enteredinto a contract with Aliant to use their utility poles. Due to the placing of a comma, the contract is not early as lucrative as Rogers’ perceived it to be and will be out oodles of money.

I love it! Not one big business cheating another by use of grammar (which is how sme see the whole thing), but rather I love that a simple comma can hold such an important place. The clause of trouble is…

“The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.””

See, the combo of the two commas means that technically, the middle section (“and therefore… terms”) could be taken out of the sentence and it would not affect the overall meaning of the sentence – it’s just adding extra info. So that means the sentence could read…

“The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.””

And that means Aliant has every right to do what they’re doing. Rogers (or their lawyers) made the mistake of overlooking the second comma!

I don’t want Harry to die.

Two characters to die in last ‘Harry Potter’ book: J.K. Rowling

… can they have such a problem with a critter that was originally introduced by their own government to fight an insect infestation, the sugar-loving Cane Beetle.

Send in army to fight poisonous toads, Australian state urges

I thought this article, It’s All About Me, was interesting, especially since I’ve been misunderstood recently, not in email, but in message boards and blogs I regularly comment on… and well, my own blog too. As stated in the article,

First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression
and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to
decode meaning well.

Which is why every email, blog posting and message board posting should be accompanied by a face shot… preferably of the poster, but if one isn’t available you can use a substitute.

You’ll be thrilled to know that things at the IEEE meeting I was not attending turned out marvellously. Sometimes other people simply rock! And sometimes things work out.

Anyhoo, let’s go back to the Sydney airport, just after I bought my Swatch. We toddled on over to our gate, but it was blocked off. Odd. Just to the left of the gate, a security guard stood, looking out the window. And that’s when we noticed what was happening outside. An Australian soldier in Iraq was killed, and the morgue originally returned the wrong body to Australia, mixing him up with the body of a Kuwaiti worker. What we were witnessing was the actual return of the Private Jake Kovco, 25, to his unit in Sydney. After autopsy (the circumstances surrounding his death – he died from his own gun – are a little mysterious), his body was to be returned to his hometown near Melbourne. It was very somber to witness the procession, led by a religous official, casket carried by members of the unit while the rest stood at attention in two rows on either side. To see the soldier’s mother being led to a car (Pvt. Kovco also had a wife and two young children, but they may have been hidden from our view) was heart-breaking. We hear of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sometimes the names and numbers and causes blur together in our world of insta-news. But this was perfectly clear. And cause for reflection, on life and death and war.

I think I’m going to leave this at here for now. Im uploading pics as I type… they should be there soon.

I wnder if April could manage to do this? I suspect she’d be shot by someone for barking. And Wes? Well, he’s a bit slow to efvade being captured… he’d prefer eating the food and sitting, waiting for it to digest.

Golden Retriever Caught After 2 Years