The Canadian Press had an article on how some members of Facebook are finding it annoying to the degree that they leave Facebook altogether.

This article discusses how good video footage is being shot by amateurs. The following high quality macro videography is what caught my eye.

Ants and Bees from youdiejoe on Vimeo.

Hover flies, Bees, and more, camel spider and mantis from Lucasberg on Vimeo.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is set to announce a set of software and services for mobile phones in the next two months. The service will provide search, Gmail, Maps, and YouTube.

Note that Google already acquired Zingku and Jaiku, two mobility oriented web sites recently.

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and VISA will trial the use mobile phones as wallets in 2008. The trials will be done in Ontario, and will be limited to amounts of $25.

This is finally catching up to what some countries in Scandinavia have.

Via CBC.

Naomi Wolf has a very interesting talk where she explains how fascism starts, and what steps fascist dictators take to convert a democracy into a dictatorship. She explains how these signs are present today in America.

Also check the 10 steps towards fascism.

There are rumors that Rogers will make the Apple iPhone available in Canada by December this year. This is logical, since Rogers is the largest GSM provider in Canada.

The price is said to be $499 CAD with a 3 year contract.

Rogers Wireless, Canada's largest GSM mobile provider is testing a new 3.5G HSPA/UMTS network that can operate at 7.2Mbps.

I hope they have reasonably priced unlimted data plans, like those available south of the border. 

Note that Rogers also own Fido, which is the only other GSM network in Canada.

Humans hard wired for optimism

Research in the USA and the UK has found that humans are hard wired for optimism. Research participants were found to expect that good things would happen to them sooner, often underestimating that bad things would happen.

In 2003, a Canadian 3-hour documentary titled The Corporation was released.

Documentary: The Corporation

The documentary is critical of the modern-day corporation, exposing it as "a person" from the legal point of view, and evaluating its attitude towards society and the world at large from the eyes of a psychologist.

One of the conclusions is that a corporation is a psychopath.

Robert Hare: criminal psychologist

This conclusion is grounded in the work of 71 year old Robert Hare, professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia in criminal psychology. He is known for having developed the Psychopathy Checklist, used by police around the world, as well as other occupations such as firefighters, teachers, nuclear plant workers, and more.

Hare also co-authored Snakes in Suits: When the psychopaths go to work in 2006 with Paul Babiak, a New York industrial psychologist.

On to psychoanalysing CEOs

In a July 2005 article on Fast Company titled Is your Boss a Psychopath? Hare's checklist is used to evaluate several high profile CEOs, and Fast Company found that many of them scored as "moderately psychopathic". The article is full of descriptions of corporate psychopaths, such as:

glibness and superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth;
pathological lying; conning and manipulativeness; lack of remorse
or guilt; shallow affect (i.e., a coldness covered up by dramatic
emotional displays that are actually playacting); callousness and
lack of empathy; and the failure to accept responsibility for one's
own actions.

A British study concludes that they are:

superficially charming, egocentric, insincere, and manipulative, and just as likely to be grandiose, exploitative, and lacking in empathy

CEOs are the perfect example of non-violent psychopaths. The only difference between the successful psychopaths (CEOs) and the non-successful ones (regular criminals) is that the latter are more impulsive and physically aggressive!).

The article goes on to distinguish between the destructive, transient, in-it-solely-for-self-gain psychopath and the productive narcissist, who shares some traits (e.g. disregard for others, self centered), but is out to change the world and is loyal to the corporation and shareholders.

The Corporation: Watch the video online

Finally, you can watch the The Corporation documentary by clicking on the image below.l

Tony Blair says Canada will become an economic and political powerhouse.

Canada is poised to become an economic and political powerhouse in
the world, former British prime minister Tony Blair said Friday.