According to Michael Geist, as reported on slashdot, something like DMCA may be coming to Canada this spring. Please, anyone who reads this, who lives in Canada, find your MP here (look for "Find your M.P. using your postal code") ou ici (à "Trouvez votre député au moyen de votre code postal") especially if Conservative, and write to them, by post, by e-mail, phone them and ask them to reconsider. We're already paying a piracy tax on blank media, so a law like this is unjust. It may be a little bit odious to pay a surcharge on media in order to maintain fair use, but to have paid the surcharge and then to have fair use hemmed in with severe consequences for attempting to retain it is just plain wrong. Not as wrong as withholding cheap vitamins from 3rd world children but wrong as in collecting fire insurance on a box of cigars you just finished smoking.

Some of my latest favourites

Cosmology: The Many Directions of Time -- I blogged this some time ago and tried to find it again talking to my Dad last night. Of course, when I wanted it, I couldn't find it. And then I see the guy's won a Pritzker Fellowship. Cool! I got excited, and so did some other people who could be expected to know better. Good-bye Dark Matter, good-bye tuning-fork model of classification of galaxies, hello possible explanation for quasars and Seifert Galaxies. This looks like it could be the next revolution in cosmology and physics. But it comes with a caution for anyone who hooks Genesis 1 and the Big Bang theory too closely. As usual, marrying theism too closely to one scientific hypothesis can always bite back later.

Literature: I feel like a kid again. Tomorrow, a brand new book by one of my favourite authors, now passed-on for 30+ years, is coming out. Christopher Tolkien has left publishing all of his Dad's doodles and scribblings and put the Narn î Hin Húrin out in book form. It's coming out tomorrow. I'm so excited. Time to go revisit Neldoreth after Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Nargothrond after Finrod's departure, to see what a real friend Beleg Strongbow was. Children of Hurin, coming out tomorrow. This one I think I'll bother to buy hardback.

Auditory pleasure: I am so enjoying the Drew Marshall Show, even if I wind up listening to most of it delayed over a week -- how can you justify spending four hours on a Saturday (1:00PM-5:00 PM EST/EDT Saturday) glued to your computer with a family and a house to deal with? I don't know. Check out the site, check out his (first and probably only ever) appearance on Huntley Street. If Joe Molson-Six Pack can relate to any Canadian Christian personality out there, it'll be Drew. Interviews of special interest to Canadians with Stephen Lewis, Roméo Dallaire, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Harper, Valeri Bure (Pavel's brother), Don Cherry, Paul Henderson -- and most of them are archived for on-demand listening later.