Jordon Cooper and Cre8d met up with thieves this Easter weekend, and Cre8d had a flash flood thrown in to boot.

I didn’t know what a puggles was either. Remarkable.

SARS
China’s health care system is in shambles according to this report in the Asia Times. This article was written two days ago, and already the SARS statistics are outdated.

Echoing fears about how well poor provinces could handle a full-fledged health crisis, Communist Party chief Hu Jintao warned that if mishandled, the SARS epidemic could jeopardize not only social stability but also China’s overall economic development. The emergency meeting of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo, held on Thursday, follows two other SARS-related meetings convened by Premier Wen Jiabao.

A matter that has been taboo for months, SARS and its impact on China’s future have become the most formidable challenge the country’s leaders, who assumed their positions in the past months, are facing as they try to seek legitimacy for their rule.

There are plenty of reasons to worry. Rural residents account for more than 70 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population, but receive just 20 percent of public spending on health. Urban residents also enjoy disproportionate access to hospital beds and trained medical personnel.

China has made the unpreceded move of cancelling it’s major May Day holidays and preventing the potential travel of tens of millions of citizens.
The loss of key health care workers and the strains on medical systems around the world are taking their toll. The war in Iraq grabbed headlines while this virus spread, and health agencies and governments attempted to get the word out. I suspect we’ll see a continued spike in reported cases, and a higher mortality rate as China comes clean in it’s reporting.
It is unlikely this virus will die off, a diagnostic tool, effective treatment and public education will be necessary for a generation unaccustomed to dealing with virulent outbreaks.

Canada is at a cross roads. Health officials say the country is about 3 weeks behind Hong Kong which recorded 12 deaths yesterday, four of those previously healthy, young adults.

27 countries have now reported in to WHO. 8 countries are reporting local chains of transmission, and 18 countries have not had any deaths.

Iraq
Aid agencies are scrambling to restore basic services in Bagdhad such as sewage treatment, water and electricity.

In Baghdad, the first major shipment of food aid is awaiting distribution in a government warehouse. Fifty truck-loads of wheat flour from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) arrived at the trade ministry warehouse on Sunday.

Unicef has also delivered its first medical supplies from Jordan to Baghdad, the bulk of which contained rehydration kits to be distributed to hospitals and primary health centres.

Aid agencies are increasingly concerned about the need to restore basic services, fearing there will outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and dysentery if action is not taken soon.

Canada’s Gun Registry
I didn’t check all these stats, however some are certainly true. This is ludicrous.

Canada’s billion-dollar gun registry employs 1,800 bureaucrats, who spend their days tracking down duck hunters and farmers. By comparison, Canada hired only 130 additional customs officers to protect our borders after Sept. 11. Here are a few more eye-rolling facts about the gun registry, mostly unearthed by MP Garry Breitkreuz from Saskatchewan.

Internal audits show that government bureaucrats have a 71% error rate in licensing gun owners and a 91% error rate in registering the guns themselves.

The government admits it registered 718,414 guns without serial numbers. That means either the bureaucrats forgot to write them down, or the guns didn’t have serial numbers in the first place. That’s as useless as registering a vehicle simply as “a blue Ford Explorer.”

To these gun owners, the government has sent little stickers with made-up “serial numbers” on them, that gun owners are supposed to stick on their guns. And everybody at the gun registry is praying that criminals who steal those guns won’t peel off the stickers.

Some 222,911 guns were registered with the same make and serial number as other guns. That’s not just useless — it’s dangerous. If someone else with a “Blue Ford Explorer” is involved in a hit and run, you’ll be the one getting a knock on the door by the RCMP.

Naw, all our money is being spent on the bureaucratic salaries, we don’t have that many RCMP…. And is this sticker like the proverbial mattress tag, as in do not rip off under penalty of…?

Out of 4,114,624 gun registration certificates, 3,235,647 had blank or missing entries — but the bureaucrats issued them anyways.

In the beginning, the government’s firearms licenses had photographs on them - just like driver’s licenses do. But after hundreds of gun owners were sent licenses with someone else’s photo on them, the government decided to scrap photos on the licenses altogether, rather than fix the problem.

Private details about every gun owner in the country are put on one computer database, called CPIC. That’s valuable information to a peeping tom – or a criminal. The CPIC computer has been breached 221 times since the mid-1990s, according to the RCMP.

I know Canadian law enforcement isn’t known for it’s computer skills, but hello here. This is CIPIC people. Get it together.

In August of 2002, the gun registry sent a letter to Hulbert Orser, demanding he register his guns, and warning him that it’s a crime not to. Orser died in 1981.

Garth Rizzuto is not dead, but he’s getting older — he applied for a gun license 21/2 years ago. He hasn’t been rejected. They’re still “processing” his application.

Some 304,375 people were allowed to register guns even though they didn’t have a license permitting them to own a gun.

On March 1 of 2002, bureaucrats registered Richard Buckley’s soldering “gun” - that’s right, a heat “gun” used for welding tin and lead. No word yet on Buckley’s staple guns or glue guns.

I’d read a curling iron was successfully registered.

Some 15,381 gun owners were licensed with no indication of having taken the gun safety courses — one of the main arguments for licensing.

Despite the billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy, gun-owners must still pay $279 for the required licenses, registration, photo ID and other costs to register a single gun. That’s as much as a gun costs in the first place. It’s a tax — a tax on rural Canada.

The government spent $29 million on advertising for the gun registry — including $4.5 million to Group-Action, the Liberal ad firm now under RCMP investigation.

One of Murphy’s Laws is that any bureaucracy will rise to the heights of it’s incompetence. I think they may need a whole new rule for this.

I’m listening to WQXR out of New York City. Betta fish seem to like the vibrations of classical music, however, the one I’m ‘babysitting’ goes into a bit of a rang over high tenors. It likes piano though, and moves over the the speaker side of the fish bowl.