Monday, December 31, 2007

Fwd: you have to see it to believe it...

I still can't believe it...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: somegirl <somegirl@ gmail.com>
Date: Dec 31, 2007 2:21 AM
Subject: you have to see it to believe it...
To: someothergirl <someothergirl@ yahoo.com>, selam yohannes <myemail@gmail.com>


http://www.amazon.com/Blow-G-Unit-Book-Kwan/dp/1416540601



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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Friday, December 21, 2007

Stolen cars

So check this stolen car list (you can read the article, it's at best, okay.  The interesting bit is the 10 most & least stolen cars list on the side).   Anyway, I noticed a trend --- which really makes sense --- that the prettiness of the car seems to make all the difference.   The least stolen cars are all big and ugly.   Whereas the the most stolen tend to be more toward the smaller size... and of course they tend to be relatively nice to look at (well except for the 1994 Dodge Shadow / Plymouth... I don't get that one at all).  

So if you want to avoid your car being stolen, go big and ugly.   Of course, I would also suggest that perhaps it shouldn't be Hummer ugly.

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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Wind of change?

This is an encouraging story out of Malawi.   A high school drop-out, William Kamkwamba, built a functional windmill.   He had no education or training, just his intelligence, motivation and lots of action.   It seems that if more people were like this man, then the various nations and tribes in Africa can get out of the misery all on their own.

The question that it bring to mind, is how do we help encourage this?   What can we, on the outside, do to help this kind of thing along?

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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Web freedom and ads...

Yet another reason to dislike Rogers.

They certainly aren`t endearing themselves to the general public.   I really really really hope that web neutrality is somehow enforced via legislation.   Freedom of the press is important, as as things are going, access to a neutral, uncontrolled internet is vital to the continuing of this freedom.

If they can throw in ads on a whim, they can also control what can and can`t be seen or heard.   If this can happen, then the Eritrean government will (and seems to, already have) control what people can see.   And although this doesn't mean they can control ideas, it does make it harder to people to disagree with (and therefore rebel) against the government.   Which is another form of control.



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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

If you broke it...

Michael Ignatieff said on Charlie Rose...

"If you broke it, you own it."

When he was talking about the Iraq war and the American responsibility about what should happen to Iraq. He was referring to the lack of planning that the U.S. did before they went in; i.e. no "phase four" type of plan. I think he says it best... America broke it, and now they hope that someone else would own it. But there is no one there that can own it. The U.N. needs to step in and help, but U.S. definitely owns it.
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ሰላም ዮሃንስ

Monday, December 10, 2007

If taglines were honest...

This is a great blog entry...

it's funny cause it's true.

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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Friday, December 07, 2007

National Cross Country Championships 2007


This is me last Saturday December 1st, either finishing one of the loops (4 times 2.5 km) or the brutal finishing hill.   Yeah it looks as fun as it was... cold, snow, wind and minus 7 Celcius ... ugh...
 
Hère`s the video of it... you`ll see me starting at about 2:20 in the video.   I got stuck in the back off the start and had to work to get up front.

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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Army against Gangs?

So Toronto Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti is asking that the federal army be brought in to fight the gangs in the Jane and Sheppard area. Perhaps the feds can label gangs as "terrorists" to justify them coming in. So this begets one question...

Is he an idiot???

I mean seriously. What the hell does he expect them to do? Yeah, there was a street gun fight, what you gonna do? Keep the army around indefinitely so that this will never happen again? It is such a moronic suggestions, I don't know what dumb aspect of that dumb idea to strike down...

How does someone like that get elected anyway?

If you ever read this Mr. Mammoliti: You just made Mel Lastman look like a genius.**

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ሰላም ዮሃንስ

**Follow the link to the transcript, then press "Ctrl+F" ('Ctrl key plus F key) and type "brown: Mayor". This will bring you to the relevant part, read on from this.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Fwd: hey ya peanut style

I agree.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: somegirl <somegirl@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 5, 2007 1:21 PM
Subject: hey ya peanut style
To: selam yohannes <myemail@gmail.com>, our friend <heremail@yahoo.com>


So cute!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGnYw-OuCnI



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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Immigrants

One-fifth of Canada, and half of T.O. is immigrants.  So says the survey.   Of course this is pretty common knowledge among Torontonians.   I mean looking around, or even asking around it's hard to find person who's family has been here more than 3 generations.   Most of the people I know are either immigrants themselves (including myself), there parents came here and had them (majority of my friends it seems) or have been here a few generations ( i.e. there grandparents came over).   All this is old hat...

But it does remind me of something I experienced 10 years ago.   I remember hearing that 75% (or something like that) of Canada's population was Caucasian.   Having only grown up in Toronto, and not having the rest of Canada I found that hard to believe.   I mean, look around Toronto, there is no way that three out of four people is Caucasian (actually 51% of the city of Toronto is visible minorities).   But when I started doing door to door soliciting (Gas stuff, that's another story) in small town southern Ontario, I finally saw where all the white folks were.   All this means is that urban centres and rural Canada are two different worlds.   But even more glaring is that a vary sizable chunk of the immigration comes to the GTA.   This means that the Canadian experience is... well non existent.   Canada is many things, and each one is entirely unique.   A true salad bowl.

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ሰላም  ዮሃንስ