Prince Harry is making headlines after photos of him wearing a swastika at a costume party emerged. As you can imagine, all sorts of people are up in arms over the photos, calling it a “shameful act” among other things. For his part, Harry has issued an apology, and the Royal family has withheld further comment (especially since they have in the past been seen as sympathetic to the Nazis).

Obviously, his choice of costume was a bit tasteless. On the other thand, Harry will never understand what happened during the time of the Nazis. Unfortunately, the people that were so quick to berate Harry don’t understand that people are starting to forget. Children born now only learn about World War 2 in history class, and as more and more survivors die, the human connection to the events is lost. What Hitler and his regime did become more fact than emotion. Its sad but its true.

Harry should not have worn the swastika, and I am sure he’ll never make that mistake again. In order to prevent groups like the Nazis and their actions from happening again, we can’t forget what happened in the past. At the same time, we need to understand that the younger generations cannot be expected to feel the same passion about symbols like the swastika. Knowing the facts and history is not the same as understanding. I know that when I look at the swastika, I don’t feel the anger or hatred that someone who lived through the war would feel. Its not because I don’t care, its because I don’t understand – I can’t. Just like Harry.

Apple released their new iPod Shuffle yesterday – basically it is a flash-based MP3 player whereas the iPod is hard drive based. Tempted? Don’t waste your money. Buy a Creative player, or turn your existing iPod into an iPod Shuffle. Seriously, even the cheapest flash players have an LCD. And their tagline is just nutty, “enjoy uncertainty”.

David Suzuki has written a new column in which he calls the Tsunami aid inspiring. He goes on to say that “in all our efforts to bring some hope to those suffering, we mustn’t forget that the developing world needs our help every day. Those living in poorer countries do not often have access to the services and infrastructure that we take for granted.” Further, he points out that “the tsunami has also taken the spotlight off other long-suffering regions, such as Sudan and Uganda.”

Those are all very good points, and I agree that the outpouring of support for areas affected by the Tsunami has been touching. Yet for once, just once, I’d like to see someone as prominent and respected as David Suzuki say something about starting at home. Sure Canada is consistently ranked high on quality of living lists, but we can always do better.

Lets take a step back, and ask…how did North America get to where it is today? It wasn’t because the Europeans that settled here found people who were less fortunate and poured resources into helping them. Why are things different today? Can you imagine what western countries (not just Canada and the United States) could accomplish if the billions of dollars spent on foreign aid each year were instead spent at home? I’m all for human rights, but if it’s going to cost Canada millions of dollars to temporarily stop one group of people from killing another half way around the world, screw it. Let them kill each other. Then we can help the survivors. Why can’t we let the developing countries develop? There’s a reason we don’t call them incubated countries.

I realize that the point of view I am presenting is extreme, but perhaps that is what is needed. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s sick that people will donate millions of dollars right away to help countries hit by the Tsunami but they won’t donate a dime to their local charities. Not only that, but do you think people in Sri Lanka would donate money to Canada if Vancouver fell into the ocean? Did anyone outside the US and Canada donate any substantial amounts of money for victims of 9/11?

Obviously it is a very kind and generous act to donate to the Tsunami victims, but I just don’t like how the donations are made without a second thought. In the US alone, corporate donations for the Tsunami are set to exceed those made for the 9/11 attacks. I know that in Canada, donations must be spent on goods produced here which can then be shipped to the affected areas, but that’s not enough. That scheme only helps the people in Canada who already have something. What about those that do not?

I think it would be great if Canada instituted a law that half or even a quarter of all foreign aid has to go to charities in Canada. So if you donate $100 to Tsunami, $25 of it will go a charity in Canada. But as that is not likely to happen, let’s at least have some prominent figures make a plea for helping out other Canadians first.

So what’s with the crazy weather? Below minus 40 celcius with the wind chill is not my cup of tea. FYI, the weather warning for the Edmonton area has been continued.

This is pretty cool – MSN Search now supports RSS! Basically you can run a search and get the results in an RSS 2.0 document, which can be very handy depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Neither Google nor Yahoo have this feature, though IceRocket does.

Check out a sample search for tsunami relief.

[Via MSN Search Blog]

I haven’t really said anything about the Tsunami, as I am planning to do a podcast on it, but I wanted to post this story that I found on News.com tonite:

A Canadian student dubbed the “wave rat” for offering the domain name “tsunamirelief.com” for $50,000 on the online auction site eBay has sold it and donated the money to relief efforts, the gaming company that bought it said Monday.

The 20 year old, Josh Kaplan, made a wise decision there. Good on ya mate!

I listened to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code this morning on my way to school. I am still catching up on podcasts since the holidays, so I was listening to the show from Friday, where Adam walked through Miami, Florida and shared the sounds. It was kind of painful to be in minus 20 degree (celcius) weather here listening to Adam strolling the streets of Miami! It sounded so nice and warm there.

I guess Adam accomplished what he wanted though. Throughout the show he was talking about how radio/audio forces you to use your imagination, it forces you to think, unlike TV where you are completely passive. And he talked about “the sound”, something that is real, not just a commercial production. It came through loud and clear on Friday’s podcast Adam, thanks for doing that!

I really gotta get back into the whole podcasting thing…

Oh CAB, how I have missed you and your pizza.

Last night I was reading News.com and found that Microsoft released a beta of their new anti-spyware software yesterday. I have been a happy Ad-Aware user, and I have recommended it to many people, so I wanted to see how the Microsoft app stacked up.

First thing to note – I read an interview with Gates or Ballmer a while ago, I forget which, and whoever it was said that Microsoft went and bought the best anti-spyware software there was. The new program is the result of 21 days of work since Microsoft bough Giant Software. I don’t know what the previous Giant offerings looked like, but the new program definitely looks like Microsoft.

Put simply, Microsoft AntiSpyware is amazing. I would easily recommend it over Ad-Aware. Not only did it find 22 more threats than Ad-Aware did, it also found three that were not adware but actual programs that I use, and it marked them as Ignored. I appreciate that it still wanted to tell me about the possible threat however. Messenger Plus was one of the applications, which might seem weird, but to its credit, Microsoft also shows Windows Messenger as a threat if you have that installed still. The UI is really nice, and the feature set is extensive! I changed my IE start page, and AntiSpyware showed a popup asking if I wanted to allow the start page to be changed. Other things include real-time protection, and the SpyNet community. Pretty cool stuff!

The only thing I didn’t like was that it seemed to take a lot longer to remove threats than Ad-Aware does. Aside from that however, its an excellent beta! Keep in mind that the software is beta – so you might have problems, and it might not always be free. If you want a good adware killer now though, go check it out. One thing I’d like to see them add is integration into the new Windows Security center in XP, that would be cool.

NOTE: The software only works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Felicia does! I guess she started her blog quite a while ago, located at http://starfishi.blogspot.com. Apparently I was telling her some statistics back in October about how so many blogs die soon after they are started, and so Felicia is proud to post once a month to keep it going. For that reason, I told her that her blog is like PMS! She didn’t like that comment 😛