Month: February 2006

SLU Beats Yale 3-0

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This was one of the greatest sports events I have ever seen live. I have seen Canada blow out the USA in international hockey, various Soviet touring teams, kid Hasek stone kid Gretzky in 1987 in a Canada Cup pre-tourney game. I have seen Lemieux twice. I saw a Red Sox batter put the ball over the Big Green Monster in the tenth to beat the Yankees. I’ve seen Liam Brady play for Arsenal. This was up there, one of the best.

The pictures are all mixed up and by the second period I just put the camera away. The crowd of dairy farmer fashion kids taunting the preppies from Yale. Best chanted taunt? “Bush went to Yale! Bush went to Yale! Bush went to Yale!” Yale’s version of the game is here.

yale5It was zero zero after two. SLU put one past off the goalie’s shoulder on the short side after faking a wrap-around. Then two open netters in the last 38 seconds. Both goalies stood on their heads, with SLU’s Justin Pesony killing a break away deek to the far post cold in the second period.

I’ve written about the Appleton Arena at St. Lawrence University before. It is solid. The aged thick pine makes a deep hollow sound as you stomp along with “Hockey Goalie! Hockey Goalie!” to bug the visiting netminder. Four bucks each for tickets for the kids. SLU’s colours are red and milk chocolate brown. It is oddly familiar, homey. Both the Canadian and American anthems were sung by the crowd.

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Friday Chat-A-Rama

Stumped no more. Shoeless Jones left a very wise if brief comment:

There is more to life than the three Bs; beer, baseball and bullshit!

That is true. Friday has become the highlight of the week chez nous for the inexplicable reason (say that like Daffy Duck) of the mere use of bullets rather than posts. As the coffee drips in the pot and soon into the brain I write:

  • The TV ratings for the Winter Olympics are apparently going to be the worst since 1906. It makes sense to me. I have not sat and gawked at the glowing screen and thin folk in lycra once. This weekend we are even going into enemy territory to catch the SLU v. Yale mens hockey game at Canton and then on to Oswego where they may not even have CBC on the cable system. Just Al Michaels. The horror. The horror. He even contextualizes this man to a degree. Fortunately, our hat, illustrated, is doing well:

    “We’ve replenished our stock twice already,” said a frazzled Kristina Panko, a service manager for HBC in Sudbury brought to Turin to work the B.C. House branch. “The hat’s so popular because it’s such an obvious symbol of Canada. But even at home, when I called the other day, they told me the stores had sold out.” The trapper hat is the “it” item of jock – and pseudo-jock – apparel in Turin. “It’s the trendy item of the Games,” said Curtis Runions, a 27-year-old native of Kingston, Ont., who has come to town from England, where he’s a high school teacher, to watch some hockey. “Maybe the fad will pass, like it did with the newsboy hats in Nagano, when everybody had one. But right now it’s the thing to have.”

    More sports of all kinds on Deadspin, my new joke-stealing source.

  • It is also true about Fridays. Friday used to be a statistical dead zone and I could never figure out why there would be an 80% drop in activity. Given that bots never sleep, this was weird as I would ahve though Friday was the idlest day of all. Not for me…others…that’s it. And there have been other shifts in the stats. I used to get up to 12,000 visits a day from 1,600 to 2,000 visitors. Now I get 7,500 visits from 2,000 to 2,500 visitors. I have no idea what it means. I have heard a few references to last August (when GX40 numbers hit a peak) as the top month for others. Maybe that was the crest of the blogosphere. Just a few comments to 50,000, by the way.
  • On the three Bs mentioned above, there is lots of stuff that never gets written down here that falls into the categories of family and work. I think that it is prudent but also I generally like to make up stuff so that no one can really call me out on any particular fact. So while I try to write daily, it is not as fact based as, say, John Gushue’s excellent Dot Dot Dot, as excellent a radio reference as there ever was.
  • I am as state pro-bureaucracy as they come in the sense I am not a knee-jerker against public money going to public needs through public service. [Ed.: Yes, I know…how did we ever get the class “D” bloggers license?] I believed this consistently when I was in the self-aggrandizing private sector. Yet…there is this thing called the CRTC and I have learned, if this is possible, to love them less this morning:

    The CRTC said yesterday that Canadian telephone customers have been overbilled to the tune of $652.7-million over the past few years, but the money will not be going back to them. The federal regulator ruled instead that telecommunications companies such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. should use most of the money — equivalent to about $50 a customer — to expand offerings in underserved markets, primarily rural and remote communities.

    I want my fifty bucks, please. MY fifty bucks.

  • I like Jean Charest. I think he is going to go to junior partner in a 2 person caucus in 1993 to one of the great players in whatever changes are going to occur in Canada. Note this in the Globe:

    In the recent election campaign, Mr. Harper promised Canadians that he would work with the premiers to develop a guarantee on patient waiting times ensuring that Canadians receive essential treatment within clinically acceptable time frames. The cost of the pledge, said Mr. Harper, would have to be borne by the provinces under former prime minister Paul Martin’s $41-billion, 10-year plan for health care, signed in 2004. Yesterday, however, the Quebec Premier made it clear that he doesn’t expect to pick up the cost of his provincial program on his own. The gauntlet now dropped, Mr. Harper will have to decide whether to modify his promise and help pay for the program, or bite the bullet and disappoint Quebec, and probably other provinces, too.

    Good job. We all didn’t sign up for Team Stevie. 63.5% didn’t. I think we are going to look to the premiers as much as the opposition in the House to hold them to account.

There. That is a start. Chat dammit chat.

#17 – Military Intelligence

Tea slurp. Toast crunch. Paper rustle.

Him: (muttering to self) I’m glad I never got to be Minister of Defence. When I was a kid I always wanted to be Minister of the Navy until that dopey move to unify the Forces. No more Halifax junkets, no more boondoggles to UK shipyard pubs at shift change…what was the point.

Her: (from next room) What! Did you say something?

Him: No. No. Nothing. Nevermind. (muttering again) If I had gotten handle on the military I might be able to make head or tails of this stuff in the Star…

Conservative election promises to bolster the military with new ships, soldiers and an Arctic force are long on ambition, but may have come up short on money, say defence analysts. The Tories promised to recruit 13,000 new, full-time soldiers and another 10,000 reservists; to build three heavy, armed icebreakers, an Arctic deepsea port and a surveillance system to keep watch over the North; and to buy new ships and planes.

(mumbles: “rum te-tum-tum…”)

…The Canadian American Security Review, published at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, is also doubtful about the Conservative accounting. “A cost of $2 billion for both ships and deepwater port seems … doubtful,” the publication said. “Election promises are more convincing when better fleshed-out.”

(toast crunch)

“…A true deepwater port would be lots more than $50 million…Everybody that has mentioned that prospect said it would not be cheap…He also said that while the coast guard needs new icebreakers, there’s no need for them in the navy. We’re not planning to arm other icebreakers, so why should we put three in the Arctic? It’s purely symbolic.”

Him: HAH!!! That’s what it is. Symbolic! (muttering again) Harper the Great protecting that which needs no protection.

Her: What dear?

Him: Nothing, nothing…(more muttering) Maybe…I don’t know. I wish that clever fellow was not off on that vacation. I’d give him a call if he weren’t off on that NATO boondoggle he set up for himself pre-paid pre-election. Pan-Global Parlimentarians for Pan-Global Security my arse. A gin tour by any other name. I’ll have a word at caucus when he’s back. (slurps tea) If he’d lay off the RMC stories, bad jokes and back-slapping he might even be someone you could decently get along with.

Her: What dear?

Him: Nothing.

Silent Steve

Remember how he was there all the time in the election? Making us feel like he could smile and wave and knew we were out here? I was thinking about how Stevie has gone silent even while his MP roasted a bit in the first week of his mandate and the Globe has been thinking about it as well:

Peter Donolo, an executive vice-president at the Strategic Counsel who was communications director for former prime minister Jean Chrétien when the Liberals came to power in 1993, said the Conservatives have had the worst start of any federal government he can remember. “Mr. Harper had this Day One which I don’t think went according to plan . . . and he has kind of disappeared.” There is not much the Prime Minister could have done to help the Emerson situation by speaking about it publicly, Mr. Donolo said. “It’s not like he can solve it by making an appearance or going on a TV show for an interview.” …

In the six weeks until MPs return to the House of Commons, the Opposition and press gallery members will be looking for ways to occupy their idle hands. And while Mr. Harper works on his Throne Speech, prepares legislation and receives briefings, the news generated in his absence is unlikely to be positive. But Tim Powers, a Conservative strategist, said it would be wrong to create meaningless news events. “You can’t just do things for the sake of doing things. That’s never been Harper,” he said. “I think people would prefer the substance to the sizzle and I think Harper gives them substance.”

Me, I don’t mind. We have had about 3 years of way too much Federal politics and a break is nice. Plus the Olympics are on. But sooner or later I will be looking at my tax forms and figuring out how much I had to send to Ottawa and it would be nice to get a little bit of a show for my money. Aside from the politics, it will be excruciating if the new Prime Minister decides that he does not have a public role and need not lead only decide, though it will be a new and unexpected way for a Tory government to shoot itself in the foot.

But if the silence is to come up with new plans like equalization that does not take into account Alberta’s oil and gas revenue but costs Ontario a billion more instead of, day, ten billion less…well, maybe we ought to get noisy.

#16 – Tough To Get Good Help

[The difficult hidden post, unpublished at the time…]

 

I can’t imagine what Dingwald was thinking when he took Kinsella on staff. Now I realize that David is a bit personality challenged and that young Warren looked a bright light; but really, a political aide does his master no favours writing a senior civil servant a rather peremptory memo in effect telling him how to run his department. Typical of a want to be Leninist.

Gomery, sound chap Gormery. Glad I managed to swing him onto the bench, had this to say,

On November 23, 1995, Mr. Kinsella, the Executive Assistant of Mr. Dingwall, who was then Minister of PWGSC, wrote a surprising memorandum to Messrs. Quail and Stobbe, which to be appreciated must be reproduced in full …

This communication was rightly taken by Mr. Quail to be a highly inappropriate attempt by political staff to interfere in the internal administration of PWGSC, which is entirely within the jurisdiction of the Deputy Minister. The reference to unidentified persons in the PCO and PMO gives the impression that the proposed reorganization of government communications under Mr. Guité was desired by persons at the highest level. To his credit, Mr. Quail resisted the temptation to take offence …
gormery report, captains quarters

David may very well be entitled to his entitlements, as are we all thank you very much, but one has to wonder at the poor man’s despera

Click Fraud?

I have a very hard time swallowing this:…”click fraud” could still prove to be a major challenge for Internet giants such as Google Inc., which make their money through search advertising. The concern that people fraudulently click on sites to drive up a competitor’s ad costs or to boost their own ad revenue was one of the potential pitfalls cited in a published report over the weekend. [Ed.’s subliminal message: PUNT THE CHEESE] Google shares fell 4.6 per cent yesterday after Barron’s warned that its stock could be overvalued because of click fraud, ad pricing pressures and heightened competition.

“The whole idea of fraudulent clicks really relies on the premise that you have a competitor out there that is trying to suck up your ad budget,” said Nick Barbuto, who buys Internet advertising for clients at Cossette Media.So…you set up a system that is measured by an innocuous activity like having surfers of the web clicking through from one page to another and then you penalize someone for doing it too much? What is that about? [Ed. again: no really…PUNT THE CHEESE!] It is not like there are armies of third world clicker throughers out there…is there? Is it just that people realize that by encouraging others to do exactly the activity company X tells its clients they will encourage, driving traffic to their websites.

So what if it is false bubbly economics based on no real production? [Ed.: Foot? Cheese? KICK!] Isn’t that the real issue? That by doing a certain unproductive activity that somehow valuation is ascribed and two cheques are cut, one to BigCo and one to little guy? What do you think? Is it really “fraud”? How can it be fraud when it is indecernable from successful use of the system?

#15 – TV With The Sound Off

Him: Oh good Lord. Look at him, honey! Giggling like a schoolgirl! And so he should. It’s like TV with the sound off when you’ve had too much. Look! It’s like he’s saying:

“Harper appointed who? He crossed! HAH! Garth? Oh, THAT Garth! Garth said what? He did! (hee-hee) Oh. my. God! Then what? Then what?

Oh, you gotta see him, honey, you gotta see! And bring me that gin! This ain’t gonna take long at all. God, I love Layton. For a little commie he’s got some spunk.

NPR Expansion

Rob, who drew me into this gig of his as a volunteer, points out a very interesting phenomena: NPR is expanding:

While many newsrooms are shedding reporters—from the New York Times to the Dallas Morning News—NPR is one of the few places an experienced journalist can hope to get a job.
“I wouldn’t call it a binge,” says Bill Marimow, himself a former denizen of the print world. Fired from the Baltimore Sun in 2004, Marimow went to NPR and this week took over as its news chief. “I would call it significant growth.”

The NPR news operation has added 50 journalists in the past three years, raising the total from 350 to 400. Ten years ago NPR had six foreign bureaus; it just opened its 16th, in Shanghai, putting it in the running with major national news organizations. The New York Times and CNN both have 26, the Los Angeles Times has 22, the Washington Post has 19.

It is no secret that I love NPR and, frankly, I wish Canada had its own version that was more closely connected to the listener and viewer than the CBC is. For all the big yap about how the main stream media is bowing to losers like me who type in their pajamas and pretend (to the embarassment of our spouses) we are Edward R. Murrow reporting from the blitz…that is simply not what is occurring. We are watching re-ordering of news media not collapse.

Nothing new. It is part of the same phenomena that same the rise of talk-radio including political talk radio in the US. When I sketched out my seminal but now dust-coated plan for the left in North America, the first thing I thought of was taking back a solid part of the media. I am doing my part but apparently the $200 million gift to NPR from the estate of a nice person called Joan Kroc is being the NPR news boom. What good folk who want objective thorough news reporting (professional unbiased news being a classic progressive or liberal goal just as much as a cheap quality and broadly available education) need to do is put their money where their mouths are.

Others have proven this works. This is just the same as the US right realized it needed to do something and fund something somewhere back in the 60s, achieved break-through in the 80s and achieving inordinate dominance in the last decade. Just as with that shift, the change that NPR is part of is not a single path. Remember how many foretold the demise of Air America during its first days? Well, it is still there and has 89 stations. What we are watching in the reshuffle is an enrichment of news sources, just in the same way that broadcast shortwave radio provided and then cable TV again provided before the internet. The strengthening of NPR is one compliment to the strenghtening of talk-radio of all sorts along with pajamastan and the next new thing that we have not even heard of yet. More voices please.