It is encouraging whenever the ICC or ad hoc international criminal tribunals manage to get their hands on someone accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Such prosecutions have the promise of producing a credible record of what took place, potentially providing some comfort to surviving victims, and perhaps somewhat improving the conduct of other political and military leaders elsewhere in the world.
Month: May 2011
Eagle monument
Theft
Over the course of my life, very few things have been physically stolen from me.
When I was in high school, I had a bunch of stuff stolen when we got burgled. I lost all my CDs, a CD player, and so on. It was all covered by insurance. In university, I was burgled again and lost a camera, a PlayStation (with a near-perfect Final Fantasy VII savegame on the memory card), and some miscellaneous stuff that was not insured.
I was unsuccessfully mugged a couple of times in Vancouver. In each case, the people involved were not very determined and accepted “I don’t have any money” as an answer. I had some cash relatively subtly threatened out of me in Morocco once, also. Finally, I recall having a fairly small amount of cash stolen from me at a summer camp once.
I don’t think I have ever been defrauded or pick-pocketed. I have never had a vehicle stolen (not even a bike).
What about others? Has any physical thing been taken from you against your will using force, the threat of force, or trickery?
Underpass in the evening
Brunch
Keep chaos at bay
WordPress 3.1.3 contains a bunch of potentially important security upgrades.
Remember to backup your MySQL databases before upgrading.
Rebecca smiling
Canada Postal Strike 2011, possibly delay of Economist deliveries
My mind has just been overwhelmed by terror!
A postal strike in Canada may disrupt the delivery of The Economist. If The Economist stops being delivered, I will lose my one and only source of information about what is happening in the universe!
Photos and asides
Sorry for the thin content here lately. I have been intensely busy with other things.
For instance, last night I took photos at a Young Canadians in Finance sponsored fundraiser for the United Way. The keynote speaker was Wayne Wouters – Clerk of the Privy Council and Canada’s top bureaucrat. The United Way has a press release up about the event, which includes one of my photos.
P.S. If you are planning to mail anything in Canada – or have anything mailed to you – it may be wise to do it soon.
P.P.S. You can solve chess endgames for free online, using the Nalimov Endgame Tablebases. Once you are down to six or fewer pieces (including kings), the number of possible chess positions falls off sharply. In fact, they can all be stored in just over 7 gigabytes of space.
Backlit maple leaves
