So I'm sitting at home today watching my toddler run around when the phone rings. I answer the phone and someone with a heavy Indian accent introduces himself as someone from technical support and calling me about my computer. Given that I haven't called tech support about any of my computers in decades I'm fairly certain this is the "we found a problem with your computer" scam. So I decide to play along.

With the revelation that it was the Harper Conservatives and not the Liberals that were using a US company to phone voters during the last election one question remains unanswered. What information did the Conservatives give this company? This is important since US law requires US companies to provide their databases of personal information to the US government on request.

Given the media feeding frenzy that is the robocall scandal, it is interesting to note the almost complete lack of Conbot commenters in the comment sections of the stories. This can mean a couple of things, first that the people that the Conservatives pay to troll through media comment sections to "correct" news stories and people's perceptions of the CPC have the weekend off. Though you'd think the party would be pouring on the overtime to ensure it's point of view were being front and centre on the web.

About a year ago back here I wrote about what appears to be the culture of lying and deceit that the Harper Conservatives seem to be embracing. Fast forward to now and the revelations that voter suppression tactics were actively used by the Conservative party during the last election show that this culture of lying and deceit has caused an even greater rot to permeate the Harper Conservatives.

There is, rightly, much ado about the internet spying bill C-30 that is currently before the house. A bill so poorly written that the Harper Conservatives have sent it to committee for amendments before it has even reached second reading. There are several moral reasons why the inappropriately named "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act". I say inappropriately named act due to the fact that CSIS has no jurisdiction in dealing with child pornography, but this act allows CSIS the same access as the police. That goes to the bill's deeper purpose, allowing the Harper government to spy on Canadians.

My project for my final course in my degree has been approved. I'm looking at if there's a connection between the presence of singly ionized sulphur and the morphology (shape) of the nebula. A side benefit of this is that there will be lots of pictures of planetary nebulae. Not the best cosmetically since that's not my purpose, but they still can be quite pretty.

It is well known in political circles that Harper is at best ignoring Quebec and is at worst being actively hostile towards the province. It's at the point where long time Conservatives in Quebec are starting to complain about it. The question of why an allegedly national leader is ignoring Canada's second most populous province? There two reasons for Harper's action (or more appropriately inaction) towards la belle province. First and simplistically it feeds his base in the west who see Quebec as a province of lazy whiners who only take, take, take. The real reason is more Machiavellian, in that Harper needs a strong Bloc Quebecois to maintain his majority in parliament.

Ok, dying stars. Some more planetary nebula. Again not the best images as they're residuals from some science images I'm taking for school (no to mention is was a couple of days before full moon). I need to image several more, but the weather isn't cooperating at the moment. Hopefully things clear up by next weekend.

In honour of the deep ties between the Conservative Party of Canada and the folks that run the "Ethical" oil organization, a new Conservative Party of Canada logo:

The political right of this and most countries hates unions. They blame them for everything from job losses to hemorrhoids. It is astounding how much the right blames unions for problems. This editorial in the National Post shows how extensive the mythos against unions goes in the political right.