Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell

(Random Title lol)

I'm here at school, an hour before my first exam (and the most difficult... which is good, since I get it out of the way :)). The only exam that has me more worried is the English exam on Monday, since there's the chance the prof will refuse to let me write it as I skipped the last month of classes in protest. But I have the knowledge to pass it if I write it, so fuck him. Tomorrow is an easy exam - Web Programming. I have no worries as I've already passed the class, so all of the exam marks are to boost my average :).

Later today, I'm heading downtown with Shannon (and perhaps Tina), see what there is to see there lol.

I'm interested in your guys opinions on something - mandatory sexual health education. This got into my head last night when we had a debate on whether or not the legal age of consent should be raised from 14 to 16 - I thought better sexual health and anti-sexual predator education would help kids stay safe. Which brought up the topic that sexual health education is fairly poor - its good in some schools, but in mine it was poor and other people have the same complaints. My idea was to make sexual health education mandatory in all public schools (Catholic or not), make it so that parents cannot insist that their kids leave class (because regardless of whether or not the parents think it should be taught in schools, the fact remains that they do not have complete control over what their kids do and its better that they are educated about the dangers, side effects (pregnancy) and how to protect themselves than not) and cover a much broader range of topics - heterosexual intercourse is important, but add anal intercourse, oral sex, proper condom use (the introduction to condoms in my school was WRONG... VERY VERY WRONG), homosexuality in general, even go into the fetishes and how to do them safely, what they are. The curriculum would need to specify roughly how much time is to be spent on each topic, minimum, so that teachers can't just say "Yeah, boys can fuck boys, NEXT TOPIC!". Finally, the curriculum would need to be set at a federal level, which poses problems considering that education is run by the provinces, but I'm sure there is a way around that. Any comments from you guys on this?

(I feel like ranting today - watch out)

Stephen Harper and the Budget

So, we're once again kicking the natives, going back on the promises to help protect the planet and kids are going to have to pay more to be educated. On the positive side, our textbooks will cost $80 less a year and Canada might actually have a military that isn't made fun of on Air Farce every night. Awesome. I am so proud of our government, they do a wonderful job and deserve all the praise in the world. That was sooo sarcasm if you didn't get it. And alright, they cut our taxes. Thats bad. You're going to say why and I'm going to give you the answer. No matter who you are, you benefit from the government's spending. If you're a student, the government pays part of your tuition (hence why its cheaper here in Canada). If you have medical problems, the government pays part of your health care costs. The government cutting money out of the budget (and they're taking it from the environment, education and cultural affairs) means the government does less for you. That's bad. And sure you're going to point to the 10billion dollar surplus. Alright, one - 10billion in proportion to the amount of money the government uses is small. Two - you've done a budget I suppose? I know when I build a budget, I build in a bit of padding around my estimates, just to make sure that if something goes wrong, the money is there. The surpluses could simply mean that the government hasn't been spending the money it put aside in case of emergency. And three - the government has a surplus... how is that bad? We have plenty of ways we could use a surplus - reduce the national debt, transfer it to the provinces, perhaps even refund it to Canadians. Who says that the government can't have a surplus? Finally, the tax cuts... yes the tax cuts. Corporations gets their taxes slashed. Businesses gets their taxes slashed. There is a raise in the amount you don't have to pay taxes on. And the middle two income brackets are raised, not to mention the cut in the GST. All of these are good (Asides from the fact they mean that the government will have less money to play with and thus can do less for us) - but what about the raise in the lowest income bracket by half a percent? What about people who don't pay much GST, considering that basic food and I believe shelter is not taxable. Think about this carefully, not just from your perspective, but from the perspective of society.

People who think fighting for gay rights is a thing of the past.

It isn't. Wake up and take a look south to that wonderful nation... the good old US of A. It doesn't affect you? That's a horrible attitude to have. When considering the rights of people, since when have borders mattered? And even here in Canada... we have a Conservative government (Which, frighteningly, could be a majority government now that they're bribing the public with their own money). That means the potential for reopening the debate on same sex marriage is there (I believe they're planning it for the Fall is what I heard), which would be a major step in the wrong direction for our country. And we still have massive amounts of homophobia, especially in schools. No, the fight for gay rights is far from over.

-----

Rants over, exam is coming up soon, but I just wanted to mention that I know some of you don't think society works and really have a "the world can fuck off" attitude. While I sympathize (I really do, and agree with you most days lol), if some people don't point out what's wrong with society, then society will never change.

Anyways, I'm done... for now.

Later!

- Dep