A little knowledge isn't dangerous... just a lost profit opportunity.

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Or, rather, the free access to it. Geek News Central highlights another reason I trust big business about as far as I throw it: there is a movement afoot in the United States to disallow public access to the National Weather Service.

A quote from the blog post:

Imagine you have paid taxes for these guys to predict the weather and now because private companies like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel who actually get their raw data from the National Weather Service want it locked out for the Taxpayers.

This is so they can make money and charge you twice for your weather. I don’t know about you folks but it sounds like it’s time to fire up the old Fax machine and send a few letters to my elected officials saying I am opposed to such legislation and will be watching how they vote.

Many of you Weather buffs use this data including universities, the loss of this Data to the public would be a tragedy. [PalmBeachPost]

What’s next? Shutting down library access to newspaper archives so that the public is forced to pay the newspapers for the service? Yes, this is a government bill, but shame on them too. The government is supposed to protect the interests of the public, not big business, and the free flow of information is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy, be it socialist, centrist or libertarian. Government certainly doesn’t need to protect the interests of big business, but such seems the invisible hand of the marketplace.


I Guess You Just Have to Be There

I’m having a little trouble understanding British politics at the moment. There’s an election this Thursday, and Labour PM Tony Blair is catching a lot of heat because of his unpopular stance in favour of the Iraq war. Furthermore, a set of minutes released to the press suggests that Blair, just as many suspect of Bush, decided to attack Iraq first, and justify it later.

So, he’s taking heat for an unpopular war, and the main beneficiaries seem to be… the Conservatives? Who would likely have taken the country into the very same war with the same level of enthusiasm, if not more.

And the Liberal Democrats, the one party consistently against the Iraq war, can’t cut a break in this election?

And I thought my country was cloudcuckooland…


Technical Difficulties

In case some of you saw my blog with its entries all screwed up, sorry about that. My fault. I’m trying to create an RSS feed for the Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians, and the result temporarily corrupted this page. But easily fixed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

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