A disturbing number of famous people have died this week.

Tuesday: Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s sidekick and spokesperson for Publisher’s Clearing House and other brands, died at the age of 86.
Wednesday: Roméo LeBlanc PC CC CMM ONB CD, Canadian politician and statesman and the 25th Governor General of Canada, died at the age of 81 after a lengthy illness.
Thursday: Farrah Fawcett, probably best-known for her role of Jill Munroe on Charlie’s Angels, died at the age of 62 from cancer.
Thursday: Michael Jackson, legendary pop singer, died at the age of 50 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

And the Associated Press is reporting that 92-year-old Walter Cronkite is gravely ill. His family says that he is very ill and not expected to recuperate.

That’s a lot of people who have influenced a lot of people over the last few decades.

The BBC has a story on their website about a girl in Belgium who went in to a tattoo parlour to have three small stars tattooed near her eye and ended up with 56 stars all over her face. She claims to have fallen asleep in the chair and only woke up when her nose was being tattooed and now she wants most of them removed. The tattoo artist claims she didn’t fall asleep and got exactly what she ordered and only changed her mind when her father freaked out. Which of the two sounds more likely to you?

Given the picture of the tattoo artist, I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they found themselves covered in tattoos should they happen to fall asleep while he was working on them.

And, how does one fall asleep when one is being tattooed anyway? I would think the pain would be more than enough to keep you awake.

Mikhail Lennikov, his wife and son have been living in Canada for the last twelve years. Before coming to Canada, he worked as a low-level translator for the KGB (which was disbanded in the mid-1980s) for five years, which probably isn’t as big of a deal as it sounds. Lots of people worked for the KGB as translators and agents, many of them involuntarily. His wife and son were granted permanent residency on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds” earlier this year, but that apparently does not extend to Mikhail.

Lennikov has been deemed a security risk according to a CBC report and is scheduled to be deported on June 3rd. He appealed to the courts to overturn the Minister of Public Safety‘s decision, but that was denied. Now, he has claimed sanctuary in a Vancouver church in order to avoid deportation. He fears being arrested and charged with treason should be be returned to Russia, something the judge decided was not well-founded.

The questions I have are these: If he really is a threat to national security, why was he even allowed into the country in the first place? Presumably he underwent some sort of background check when he first applied for permission to stay in Canada and whatever was found was not determined to be a reason to exclude him at that time.

And if he is returned to Russia but his wife and son remain behind, is the risk any less? Could not his family be coerced into spying for whichever organization has replaced the KGB by telling them that he’ll be arrested/disappeared if they don’t do as they’re told? Finally, he’s been in the news lately, so it’s not like he has a low-profile, so presumably any risk he posed has been significantly attenuated.

The way to deal with this is to allow him to stay, assuming he hasn’t been engaging in illegal activities, and simply deny him a security clearance if he applies for a job that needs one. And if the screening system is really broken, then fix it so that this problem doesn’t happen again in the future.

Canada has allowed much more undesireable individuals to stay in the country, so I really don’t see the point of deporting this person who doesn’t seem to be “undesireable,” at least based on the reports in the media.

The Globe and Mail had a story this morning that caught my eye. To combat the use of cell phones by students in his school, Steve Gray, the principal of Port Hardy Secondary School, purchased a cell phone jamming device. The students figured out within a couple of days that something was interfering with their cell phones and quickly organized a demonstration. The principal eventually gave in and turned off the device.

At first pass, jamming cell phones in the school might seem like a not unreasonable solution to the problem. Students shouldn’t be using their cell phones in class, so if their phones are jammed it shouldn’t affect them.

The problem is that cell phone jamming devices are illegal in Canada under sections 4 and 9 of the Radiocommunication Act. Specifically, Section 4(2) states:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, distribute, lease, offer for sale or sell any radio apparatus, interference-causing equipment or radio-sensitive equipment for which a technical acceptance certificate is required under this Act, otherwise than in accordance with such a certificate.

Section 9(1)(b) states:

9. (1) No person shall

(b) without lawful excuse, interfere with or obstruct any radiocommunication;

Anyone who violates either section 4 or 9(1)(a) or (b) or who “without lawful excuse, manufactures, imports, distributes, leases, offers for sale, sells, installs, modifies, operates or possesses any equipment or device, or any component thereof, under circumstances that give rise to a reasonable inference that the equipment, device or component has been used, or is or was intended to be used, for the purpose of contravening section 9” is …

guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable, in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or to both, or, in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars.

The principal claims that he didn’t think it was illegal to operate the jammer. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  He now knows that it is illegal to operate or even possess a cell phone jammer, but he’s quoted in the article as stating “I’m going to hold onto it and hope the regulations follow reality.”

Industry Canada needs to immediately confiscate the device and fine the school board for breaking the law by both having operated the device and possessing it.

And the students need to respect the rules established by their school and turn their phones off when they’re in class.

Fans of the Simpsons should get the reference in the title of this entry and can skip ahead. For the rest of you: start watching the Simpsons. Geez. Anyway, in one episode, the town of Springfield celebrates Whacking Day, much to Lisa’s horror and disgust. Basically, the citizens of Springfield drive snakes into the town square and then club them to death. Lisa enlists the help of Barry White to rescue the snakes by cranking up the bass while he signs. The vibrations attract the snakes away to safety and it’s Bart who convinces the citizens that they need to stop it because Whacking Day was original invented in 1924 as an excuse to beat up the Irish in Springfield. Now you know know about the reference to Whacking Day, so let’s return to the other people.

According to the Australian Museum’s website, cane toads are large heavily-built amphibians with dry warty skin. They have a bony head and over their eyes are bony ridges that meet above the nose. They sit upright and move in short rapid hops. Their hind feet have leathery webbing between the toes and their front feet are unwebbed. Adult Cane Toads have large swellings – the parotoid glands – on each shoulder behind the eardrum. They’re are found in habitats ranging from sand dunes and coastal heath to the margins of rainforest and mangroves. They are most abundant in open clearings in urban areas, and in grassland and woodland.

Dogs lick them and get a bit of a high from the poisons they excrete from the glands on their back. Some vets are reporting that some dogs are becoming cane toad junkies as a result. Naturally, this has lead to people licking them to get a psychadelic high from them, which is incredibly dangerous because they’re very toxic. But people still do it anyway.

They were deliberately introduced from Hawaii to Australia in 1935 to control scarab beetles, which sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, no one thought to check that the toads could jump high enough to get to the beetles, which live on top of sugar cane stalks. They can’t.

They are, however, very good are reproducing.

As a result, Australia has zillions of cane toads and they’ve become a serious problem in some parts of the country. The Queensland government held its first Toad Day Out this past weekend. They held kill-a-toad festivals, with BBQs, and contests to see who could find the biggest cane toad. (No, really, I am not making this up.)

“To see the look on the faces of the kids as we were handling and weighing the toads and then euthanizing them was just…,” Townsville City Councilman Vern Veitch said, breaking off to let out a contented sigh. “The children really got into the character of the event.”

The toads were checked out by expects to ensure they were evil cane toads and not harmless banjo frogs (which happen to be endangered). If they were declared evil then they were either frozen or popped in plastic bags full of carbon dioxide. Apparently, even the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was on-board with the killing of the toads — as long as it was done humanely.

Fun for the whole family!