Only in Canada RCMP rant · Friday January 4, 2008 by colin newell
Would you like a breathalyzer with your fries Sir?
RCMP officers in Surrey are asking that very question as part of a new program designed to catch impaired drivers at late night drive-thru windows.
A plainclothes officer is stationed inside the restaurant near the drive-thru window while an officer in uniform waits outside.
The plainclothes officer takes a passive observer role inside the restaurant and looks for signs of impairment, such as slurred speech and the smell of stale liquor.
For the love of…
“We’ve gotten really good buy-in from the proprietors that we’ve dealt with,” said Sergeant Roger Morrow, spokesman for the RCMP’s Surrey detachment. “They’re really excited about it, they’re having fun with it.”
Buy-in? What the @&*! is Buy-in?
He said the program, titled Project WULF (an acronym for Would You Like Fries), has been used on three nights in recent weeks and has already caught two impaired drivers and doled out numerous roadside suspensions…
Do the whoppers and biggie-fries come with that suspension?
Why not go one better and station RCMP officers:
- in Bars
- in your living room
- at Airport arrival gates
- at every Tim Horton’s outlet
The RCMP have had a bad year (2007) tasering innocent people and putting bullets through the heads of people in custody… and I know how that can screw up an otherwise effective Walt Disney-esque public-relations campaign.
But this… I just do not know.
The fraud of HD (High-definition) radio · Monday September 17, 2007 by colin newell
I have been a radio kind of guy for years. Versus a television kind of guy that is.
My first transistor radio was pressed into my young hands in the mid-sixties. Yes, folks – I am that old. And that is OK.
Within a few years it was not enough that I owned a variety of radios – I was building them too. At 13 years of age, I built a multi-band shortwave radio from a kit.
I do have a fondness for AM Radio however. For those who have forgotten it, AM radio is that muffled old style of radio from 540 to 1600 (now 1700khz) that carried your early rock & roll music (for those of you over 30 [or 40!] that can remember such a thing.)
There was always something comforting about tuning across an old radio dial at night never quite sure what you were going to hear; the swish of static, the heterodyne of mixing stations, the clear channel trans-continental stations that used to be king.
Times have obviously changed. Media has been concentrated and centralized. Regional and local voices have faded… but not entirely. It is as if there are corporate forces at work to take away individuality and freedom… of choice. Just the other morning I was turning across a portion of the dial and I was hearing the same program every 10khz (in radio world, an individual channel)
Coast to coast AM as it is called is a program on a chain of broadcasters (I think owned by Clear Channel). It sounds to me like a faceless and homogeneous drone of, well, nothing of merit.
Fast forward to 2007. For the last couple of years (in the U.S.A.) a corporation called Ibiquity has been pushing High Definition radio – or HD for short. HD AM and HD FM.
High definition AM. Isn’t that a natural oxymoron?
Anyway. Long story short. AM HD is a hybrid of technologies. Standard old analog AM transmitting techniques exist alongside digital sub-carriers. Problem is, the standard channel separation of 10khz on the AM band becomes unworkable with this format. A station running AM-HD on, say, 810 khz generates interference from 790khz to 830khz! In days of old, interference was limited to about 5 to 7 khz from the center channel, not 25khz!
What this means for smaller stations (in the U.S.) is that their reach or range is diminished by co-channel interference.
If you are a Canadian or Mexican border station trying to serve a rural market, your signal could be crushed or diminished by the U.S. based noise makers. Acceptable? I think not.
What to do?
If you are an American who enjoys long distance or rural AM reception and are getting buzzed make sure you write the station and any stations that are getting slammed.
If you are in Canada, send an e-mail to Industry Canada or the CRTC. Trust me, they do listen.
You will hear more from me on this issue.
It is about radio sovereignty. It is about freedom of choice. It is about a free and accessible media. Radio is one of the last free domains of expression that is open to anyone. Do not let a single corporation take that away.
Comment [7]
Illegal search and seizure · Thursday July 19, 2007 by colin newell
Let me just start with…
I would rather a guilty drug dealer go free than have 10 innocent civilians hassled by Canadian Customs officers.
I mean, who hasn’t heard the tale of families crossing back into Canada from the U.S.A. and have the zealots in the blue uniforms tear their car apart on a whim only to have the bewildered family members left to put the car back together?
It’s nazism. It’s fascism. It’s a violation of our charter rights and it needs to stop.
Yea. I used to be intimidated by border guards – but not anymore. To be fair, most of them are decent people on the front line of defense of our nations security and integrity. But there needs to be a line drawn somewhere.
And in a recent case, a B.C. Provincial court judge has thrown out a case of a drug dealer who was detained while trying to import 50 kilos of cocaine into Canada.
Yes – he is a drug dealer and obviously guilty as can be.
The law states that you can not just detain someone on the grounds that something fishy might be going on.
And yea, drilling holes in a free citizens car and tearing it apart it pretty uncool too.
And before you call me a bleeding heart liberal (citing as many of my neo-con friends do: “If ya got nothing to hide you shouldn’t mind a little gloved hand up your wazoo!” nonsense…) – Searching someone without a warrant and detaining them without legal representation is illegal in this country.
And to the additional naysayers I offer: It takes minutes to obtain a warrant in most cases. A phone call.
As Canadians we have the responsibility to be on guard against those who would quickly strip away our rights in the name of whatever cause they are hugging.
Be aware. Be diligent. Know your rights.
Friday gas rant blogging price drop · Friday May 18, 2007 by colin newell
Gas prices in Victoria B.C. Canada
The Jubilee Esso full-serve at 1669 Fort Street in Victoria dropped its price from 129.9 to 125.9 overnight…
obviously in response to the unending pressure that this blog and others were placing on their business.
Yea. Right.
Still, it is a condescending and pathetic tip of the gas cap to consumers… I mean, they are ripping us off to the tune of about 30 cents a litre.
What can you do? How about this:
-Buy nothing from the gas station other than gas. No slushies. No potato chips. No windshield washer fluid. No candy bars. Nothing.
-Buy no more than 20 dollars worth of gas and pay in pennies and small change.
-Buy $20 of gas and park next to the air filling station… and spend a 1/2 hour filling your tires… or cleaning your car.
-Walk to your nearest gas station and place a picket on the sidewalk. Seriously. Gather your friends together. Peaceful protest is a powerful thing.
Google photo above. That was too easy
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