..a few laughs?

Back in olden da..(oh, oh, here comes a grandpa story). Yes, yes, and it's about editorial cartoons. It was December 1966, and the Spy (who wasn't to found this column yet for the first time for another decade and a half) was living in Toronto and working for the CPR. Call this obsolete version of the Spy the Ghost of Christmas past.

That "back in the day" was before activist investors seized control of the board, sold off all the railroad's holdings for cash, declared a gigantic dividend, and having enriched themselves and the buyers, exited the company with the money and left behind a mere shadow of the former corporate titan. One item sold around that time was the telecommunications subsidiary--apparently because all they could see was immediate profit and no future in that technology--best network in North America in its day. The buyer--some dudes named Rogers. Everyone in that family is a multibillionaire now because of what the Spy has always castigated as the worst business decision in Canadian history. Perhaps now that CP and K&S have merged there will be opportunities for future corporate greatness.

Mind you, there is competition for that title of futility now. What of all the department stores that saw no future in online shopping and are now gone from the scene--Eatons, Woodwards, (Simpson-)Sears, and of late Hudson Bay--the latter after hundreds of years in the business, thus one of the oldest corporate entities in the world? The university where the Spy sits while penning this on his keyboard in the exam room for his electronics course is in the Fort Langley area, so. called because it was upon a time a major fur and salmon trading fort of the HBC b 1670 05 02; RIP 2025 06 01 at the ripe young age of 355.

But the Spy digresses. So let us presently return to the past of 1966. At the time (much as today), the Parliament of Canada had two major parties that often ended up in a near tie for seats in the house of Commons--namely the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. A smaller socialist party therefore often held the balance of power, and could extract concessions from the Liberals to allow them to survive confidence votes and remain in power. (IOW, much like recent times.) The respective leaders: Lester B. Pearson (L), John George Diefenbaker (C), and Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas (NDP). The first two of these were both Prime Minister at times; the latter never remotely saw sufficient colleagues elected to claim that prize. In any event, the stage is now set for..

..the debut of a priceless Christmas political cartoon that December in a newspaper of the city of the Spy's then domicile (a pretentious place, one that imagines itself the centre of the universe and scorns the very existence of Western Canada (anything beyond Sudbury)--sorry, DC, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) Anyway, picture the three aforesaid leaders dressed in colourful brocaded costumes, John and Lester seated on camels emphatically pointing in entirely opposite directions, and little Tommy perched on a donkey between the two great ones, he flipping a coin. The caption: The Three Wise Men." One could attempt to substitute Trump, Biden, and Sanders to the same effect, perhaps, but the political dynamic in the "Terra Incognito" to Canada's South is a wee bit different to say the least, their political discourse, even the cartoons mocking it, cutting sharp as double-edged swords. "Methinks," ponderith the Spy, "they nae can laugh at their leaders' political antics, for nothing there beareth laughter."

The Spy, creating this column atop the one from last month so as not to lose his formatting consistency, nearly leaves two paragraphs from November here intact--you know O faithful reader, the pair that started: "But seriously, can we not laugh at the antics of our modern Western governments?" But here's the second and shorter of the pair, for not so old times' sake:

May we not also chuckle (even while shaking our heads, if we can do both at the same time, even if perhaps not walk and chew gum simultaneously) at the perversity of governing when it repeats all the old misteaks (The Spy never makes those) and apparently confidently forecast them to have a different outcome? The reality question is not so much whether the world economy will collapse due to the trade war, only when and how far.

Many moons of moons ago,

(the Spy's reusing the next section's title too) and like many others of his generation who looked aloft whenever something flew over at his speed and altitude and wondered, not if it was Santa's sleigh, but if it was the first of the Russian missiles coming to bomb North America out of existence, he often played the game of "What would you do if you had all power and authority?" His own well remembered answer: make it so nothing could explode--no gunpowder, bullets, bombs, missiles. All the aforesaid weapons of war simply not working any more. Later he realized that it wouldn't really matter, for wars would simply be fought with sticks, stones, bows and arrows, and swords. In Davidic kingdom times, so the Old Testament records, there were single battles with more than a hundred thousand casualties, not counting the subsequent destruction of enemy cities and their citizen populations. There was plenty of hatred for "alien" (them "others"), including mass deportations and resettlements. Technology changes, to be sure, but peace on earth can only come about by changing people's hearts. His Christmas wish today: that hatred of "others" would end. But, how likely is that, when some of the most powerful people on the planet make a career of being world class promoters of hatred?

Speaking of which..

the supreme high government of the dU.S. has created naughty lists, not only of whole countries and their current and former non-white citizens, but also of their resident corporations, and any software associated thereof. But, per a Washington Post article of 2025 12 10 (look it up yourself; no link here as subscription required) numerous apps in stores run by Google and Apple have ties to those on said government "bad, bad dogs, don't play with them" lists. Presumably both stores have the capacity to tailor their availability lists by countries. After all, several other nations prohibit various and sundry forms of speech and commerce lest their glorious "democratic" dictators' absolute authority be undermined, or, worse still, mocked. The Spy expects those newly exposed miscreant stores to quickly ban all apps associated with any such nations and the lackeys thereof.

To sing a more mundane carol..

..(mayhap as the ghost of Christmas present, his current technology wish, given his druthers, would be that every person with digital assets would learn to keep multiple backups in scattered locations and use secure sign-on methods so that:
- websites pirated by pornographers and other black hats could be restored pristine,
- ransomware would never have to be paid,
- no one would lose all their local files when their computer crashed (far less likely with a Mac, BTW, though one should never impossible),
- those foolish enough to invest in non-tangible assets with no backing, (ephemeral "coins") would not lose everything when the artificial "price" crashes to zero, or they forget their password (better not to try buying wind in the first place).

See, the Spy's routine is two different hourly automatic backups, whether working from home or right at the information mine, plus when not transporting the computer entire, on a portable SSD with images of said files for both locations: in the evening save into the salt mine's designated image, restore at home, and in the morning reverse that using a different image for storage. Spare computers? Have a separate image of each machine's files partition. Occasionally make another image on a stick. With up to ten copies of varying vintage (including the roll back abilities of Apple's Time Machine) the Spy does not very often lose data. Note, however, that he cannot say "never".

A typical LAMP server hosting websites and mail is another matter. These can be secured in such as way that even if one user is hacked, the black hats cannot get at the others. Moreover, a cPanel server (and others with similar software) has backup facilities for all the various customers' sites. However, for reasons not to be rehearsed here, such backups are limited in time, space, suitability, and reliability. If the customer does not keep up-to-date backups of their own, sooner or later the failure to do so will be regretted. Best practice: always revise and test a site entire on one's own local machine (whose files are of course multiply backed up) and when satisfied with the work, update the live copy from the local one. Never work on the live copy and make a local backup from the live one--what if it is (unbeknowst to you) already infected? Ouch. Horrible thought.

Other Christmas wishes,

of the Spy are that:
- his students would show up at university with a reasonable modicum of mathematical knowledge if they plan on a degree in science, and a modicum of knowledge of the English language and how to speak and write using it,
- once here they would come to class on time, stay awake, read the text, then do the homework and write the papers themselves instead of performing an electronic copy and paste from their favorite AI without even looking at the material, much less digesting it for themselves. Isn't AI-written material obvious? Human beings don't talk or write anything like that.

And, returning to the season itself,

many people ostensibly, even ostentatiously, celebrate the first coming of the King of kings, incarnated as one of us, to make spiritual peace with us possible. Good on them all. Thus indeed does the Spy. In theory, this peace with God that comes by faith in the finished work of his Christ at the cross, when the punishment for sin was laid on him instead of on those who become his people, ought to mean (ya think) that his followers become ever more at peace with Him, themselves, and everyone else, and when they concern themselves with sin, it is with their own, or to advise others for their good, leaving any declarations of final judgement to God. How is it that so many who claim to have that peace at least appear to remain at war with all three, and seem quick to condemn anyone who doesn't fit their personal social, bodily, or political stereotype? (Surely no one cares about stereo types in an age of 7+ audio channels anyway.) Seriously, the Spy, perhaps in the role of a ghost of Christmases future, wonders what any of us will be say when Christ returns, not in order to repeat the making of a way of peace (it is finished), but to declare that heaven has at long last completed the naturalization of the entirety of its citizen-immigrants, and the season of grace for making peace with God has finally passed, so that for his citizens it becomes Christmas forever and never winter (snow maybe OK, though?)

Joyeux Noel, in its season, until Aslan calls "time".

Oh, and since the Spy has had so much going on lately (proctoring a final exam as he writes this sentence) that the writing of this piece has stretched over an entire week, thus reaching the ides of December..a big shoutout to David, who is a whole six years old today!!

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-fifth year as a high school and university teacher in 2025. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several commercial, nonprofit, and/or educational organizations and participated in developing industry computing and educational standards both nationally and internationally. He is a long-time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named the best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He is a half-century-long member of the IEEE (life member), ACM, and MAA. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 when cancer happened and she left for heaven, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth has been released; site redesigned.) : https://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URLs for the newest edition of Issues Text:

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume One: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385226818/the-fourth-civilization-volume-one/

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume Two: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385232932/the-fourth-civilization-volume-two/