Don't be Evil

So, China has something nicknamed the 'Great Firewall of China'. Essentially what happens is the Chinese government filters the internet content that its population is allowed to see and presents its own ideas of search results for queries like democracy, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong. And all the North American search engines fall right in line and do exactly what the government tells them what to do, including the venerable Google (with motto Do No Evil).
To see what kind of searches you get check out these links (courtesy of comments from my longtime addiction Slashdot). They are two links using the American and Chinese google search image function.

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen.

Even a company that professes to follow the high moral ground eventually follows the money and screw the population. Yeah capitalism, the free markets will protect us. Of course, Google may be left behind and cannot be expected to change the world (Canada doesn't agree with the USA death penalty and yet we still do lots of business with them).

However, it begs the question, how much information are we missing?

Concerts

Went to the Nickelback/Live concert this Friday in Vancouver. I think because I essentially live under a musical rock (as Clint so kindly pointed out), I have not been overexposed to Nickelback so the concert was good. Well, the show was good, the drunken idiots puking on each other wasn't so nice. I can see why I don't go to more concerts.

Another interesting concert (as noted on Sarah's blog) is this Aussie comedy band singing about ...geek love. Fantastic, check it out. Reminds me of this Canadian band called the Arrogant Worms.

And finally, an interesting concert pointed out to me by Michelle by this band called Gorrillaz. The band is a fictional cartoon band and somehow managed to put on a Live show.

Godel, Escher, Bach

I have finally finished the book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It has taken me only 2 years to finish as I've been reading it at lunch times in between other books and it is a bear of a book to get through. Info about the book can be found at the Wikipedia Entry. I enjoyed the book but will of course need to take another few years to re-read it.

Just a Sunday

I'm reading the Vancouver magazine and found an amazing fact, ESL schools in Vancouver outnumber the city's Starbucks locations by nearly a three-to-one ratio. Starbucks here is everywhere, though I know that theme has been endlessly riffed on. The 'village' area of UBC campus is a Vancouver in minature, it has several sushi restaurants, a Helly Hanson store and a Starbucks.

New Year's Eve

Well, this year for New Years Jackie, Donna and Carly went to Whistler. We slummed it at the Crystal Lodge and spent the first part of New Years eve in the hottub (with Roots CEO, his buisness partner and wives and family). It was pretty neat to be outside with the snow falling, swimming in the pool and then into the hot tub.

We went to dinner at Caramba which was packing people in and pushing them through. Not a place I would recommend, if I go again I'm bringing my camp stove and cooking Lipton's sidekicks pasta in the village square ^_^. Prices to enter a club in Whistler New Year's eve were $50-$150! We talked and drank tea in the hotel room and were on the street in Whistler village for the countdown. With just the three girls we got approached several times by guys wanting us to join their party. The classiest was the guy at midnight who asked us if we wanted some champagne and showed us the bottle stuffed down his pants. After the fireworks everyone cleared out of the streets and we went to bed.

The great plan for the weekend was to get up onto the mountain New Year's day while everyone else was still at home with a hangover. I've been pretty disappointed that for the past year and a half I haven't been able to hike because of a knee injury. At least I am able to ski downhill (just not uphill with skins). My knee was sore from walking around the mall in Stratford and I was worried I wouldn't be able to ski. However, we had a fantastic day skiing, the snow was great, tons of fresh stuff and very few people on the mountain.

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I started out with my regular downhill skis and then switched to my teleskis (since the hotel was just a 3 minute walk from the ski lift). Woohoo, I can ski blue runs at Whistler with my telemark skis when the snow conditions are good. I can ski worse conditions better with my downhill skis but it isn't near as cool. Donna and I played teenage boys taking movies of us going down the mountain on the final run and I have a movie of me telemark skiing that only my mother is truly interested in seeing (hi mom) ^_^.

Afterwards we had dinner in Squamish at the Brew Pub and then home to Vancouver. I slept for 11 hours and am stiff from the falls but all in all a great New Year's eve and an even better New Year's day.