ishmael n. daro

Our ever-sinking moral standards

2010-03-06T05:59:40Z

I’m not one of those people who causes a fuss every time a police officer sneezes, screaming “POLICE STATE!” However, the case of Yao Wei Wu does make me question whether we are not becoming more and more accepting of state violence. Here’s the story. On January 21, two Vancouver police officers were dispatched to [...]

The wording of ‘O Canada’ needs an update

2010-03-07T00:25:15Z

The Harper government opened Parliament today with a Speech from the Throne that was mostly about the economy, as expected, but there was one rather unexpected development. In a section about honouring Canadian history and identity, there was this bombshell: “Our Government will also ask Parliament to examine the original gender-neutral English wording of the [...]

Chatroulette is full of penises

2010-03-03T07:31:55Z

ISHMAEL N. DARO News Writer For about two months, talking to strangers has been all the rage. The reason for this is the meteoric rise of Chatroulette, the Internet’s latest chat site. It matches you up with random strangers around the world. Users can communicate via webcam and microphone [...]

Bloom Boxes for all

2010-02-22T08:44:03Z

This is a pretty incredible. On CBS’s 60 Minutes this week, Leslie Stahl spoke with K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy. Sridhar is a rocket scientist whose work for NASA led him to develop a module that could potentially produce oxygen on Mars. However, when the Mars mission was cancelled, he reworked his technology from [...]

Infinite Regress

2010-02-16T07:54:32Z

At the risk of destroying either my website or the computer of anyone visiting, I have created an infinite regress into this article. By embedding an iframe in the HTML code, linking to this very post, it appears there is an infinite number of windows going back into this article. It almost blows your mind, [...]

Afghan Women’s Magazine

2010-02-16T08:59:31Z

My mother had this “Afghan Women’s Magazine” lying around and the cover was simply too great not to share. Not only is the person on the cover of the Afghan Women’s Magazine not a woman, but he doesn’t seem all that excited about being on the cover anyway, what with his crossed arms and disinterested [...]

Obama the great compromiser

2010-01-29T01:36:21Z

ISHMAEL N. DARO Opinions Writer After a year in office, U.S. President Barack Obama has shown that even the greatest orators must eventually face the difficulties of governing. Swept into power by an American public hungry for inspiration and a change from the disastrous policies of the Bush administration, Obama was doomed to disappoint his followers sooner or [...]

Power to the web

2010-01-29T01:37:10Z

There is something strangely inspiring about these Google videos — although ads would be a better description. The reason they don’t seem like ads is that most people already use Google search, YouTube, Gmail, Blogger, or any other combination of Google services so frequently that an advertisement for those services makes no sense. No one [...]

Anal bleaching, anal bleaching, anal bleaching!

2010-01-08T00:46:32Z

The Sheaf is the University of Saskatchewan student newspaper. I happen to work there. Since I’m the administrator of the Sheaf’s website, I am privy to some of the best spam the Internet has to offer. Here are a few of the funnier/more outlandish spam comments that won’t get published on thesheaf.com but still deserve their time in [...]

Another great headline

2009-12-19T05:40:24Z

Xinhua, the semi-official Chinese news agency, is proving to be a gold mine for great headlines.