Month: October 2007

Friday Bullets For The Membership Drive

So by now I expect you all have given to the NCPR membership drive. I listen to the station in the car, at work and as my wake-up call. I own a banjo and a mandolin because of the show “String Fever” that plays bluegrass. What other station responds to requests for ska? You’d be more like me if you listened too. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Give to NCPR and get yourself pickin’.

  • Apparently 55-70% of Canadians really can’t be bothered with anything anymore:

    The Angus Reid Strategies poll, exclusive to the Star, found 42 per cent were dissatisfied with the Conservative government’s proposals on the environment, while 28 per cent said they were satisfied. The remainder had no opinion. When asked about the Tories’ proposal to stay in Afghanistan until 2011, 40 per cent said they were dissatisfied and 29 per cent said they were satisfied. And while 33 per cent were not happy with the government’s plans for federal-provincial relations – which include restricting federal spending in areas of provincial jurisdiction – the poll found 30 per cent were satisfied.

    You know, if I were the guy who stands a very good chance of being Canada’s only repeat PM never to get a majority, I’d admit to myself that the polls are not going to get better and just go nutty, moving the secret plans for 2009 ahead…just to see. It’s not like things on the other side could get worse…could they?

  • Friday. The day before the fall trip to Syracuse. Another opportunity to figure out how the heck to get from the part of town with the hotels to the part of town with the bit with Clark’s. Sadly, and like Glasgow oddly enough, Syracuse is chopped up by superhighways, interstates that you may notice in this photo. There appears to be a plan to make a better pedestrian route. The current way feels sorta like one of the darker scenes from Blade Runner right now. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how many Buffalonians travel the couple of hours east to take in the game. Last time we went, Wyoming was represented by a couple of guys with goofy bison hats.
  • Science now has proven I am not a boomer.
  • I mentioned in June that Major League Baseball was trying to claim copyright over players’ names and stats. They lost (or rather the companies that bought the rights from MLB) lost:

    Last year the company won a decision by U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Medler, who held that Missouri state law on players’ publicity rights was trumped by a general national policy favoring the full and free exchange of ideas. The appeals court agreed, in an opinion by Judge Morris Arnold, saying the First Amendment right to free speech supersedes state law protecting celebrities’ right to control their likenesses – the “right of publicity.”

  • I really hope that the end result is not that magic is phony.
  • There is a good article in the New Yorker that John G. pointed me to which sets out the recent history of edgy pop music based on the premise that Arcade Fire is kinda dull. A good read but no mention of the impending fourth wave of ska.

Hooked On Salmon Oil?

I noticed I was somewhere less than bummed out and slightly to the right of bubbly the other day and I tried to think of all the things I have been doing or not been doing and I came to a very weird thought – I’d run out of salmon pills. So I look it up and…:

The brain is remarkably fatty: In fact, this organ is 60% fat and needs Omega-3s to function properly. Now researchers have discovered a link between mood disorders and the presence of low concentrations of Omega-3 fatty acids in the body. Apparently, Omega-3s help regulate mental health problems because they enhance the ability of brain-cell receptors to comprehend mood-related signals from other neurons in the brain. In other words, the Omega-3s are believed to help keep the brain’s entire traffic pattern of thoughts, reactions, and reflexes running smoothly and efficiently.

Am I addicted to a fish? If you are going to be addicted to something, is a fish so bad? I remember hearing that much of Germany was mildly stoned on St. Johns wort.

And what if they stopped making salmon oil pills – would I have to take up fishing to deal with my dirty little secret? Will it all come tumbling down one day when I am found on the job site with a couple of cans of sardines hidden in my desk as an emergency back up, thrown upon the trash heap of life, just another fiddiction statistic?

A Brewery, A Literary Tour And Another World All In One

hfxriot4
Her: I sure hope no one mentions this ever again.
Him: Me, too. How unlike us. Best to bottle it up. Pass me another.
 

An interesting combination of two of my interests may well come together in Nymburk, some 30 kilometers east of Prague, where a brewery, Postřižinský Pivovar, helps continue its story as a local brewery, how the brewery altered the life of an author – and how the brewery itself became a character in the life of the community through the author:

The brewery, operated by brewing firm Pivovar Nymburk, has strong historical and literary connections with Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who was raised in the brewery grounds and wrote “Postřižiny” (Cutting It Short) about his childhood encounters with the brewery workers. The book was made into a hugely successful film in 1981 by director Jiří Menzel, who recently adapted another Hrabal work, “Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále” (I Served the King of England). The brewery now uses the literary connection with Hrabal as a marketing tool, and the writer’s amused face stares out from the labels of most of the bottles of Postřižinské Pivo sold in the Czech Republic.

That speaks volumes for me…but sadly more over what is not than anything. We in the English speaking world are so concerned about avoiding making connections about beer and locality and community that we forget that our behavior must seem fairly bizarre to other cultures. Just from my own experience I can think of a bar owning pal who was barred by the local regulator from selling a drink he had come up with that referenced Anne of Green Gables. Recently we’ve seen some US states call out the lawyers and tribunals to keep Santa off beer bottles. Heck, in the chapter of the upcoming book Beer and Philosophy that I penned I noted that the law of New Brunswick barred representations of beer in family situations in advertising. We can’t make fun of fictional characters or even describe what actually is – because to do so we point out there is beer in our lives. Because that would be, I guess, dangerous.

And yet we do all this despite knowing we all have tales of our own how beer characterized the community. I can only speak to my Maritime Canadian youth but we all heard how Moosehead’s Dartmouth brewery had the free tap for those working on the floor and wondered why we didn’t all drop out of undergrad and apply for a job. We knew teetotaling farmers with the case in the barn. We knew the ties between Halifax’s Keith brewery and the VE Day riots when the youth of the town invaded the place and drank the brewery dry, likely some knowing relatives – maybe those above – who had some stories. We even watched ads just a few years ago for Alpine beer and how it was not worth making a career for yourself away from home because you might not be able to get your brew…and probably knew people who likely took the advice.

In many ways, beer frames (or at least colours one corner of) what you are and what you could be expected to be….but you really shouldn’t talk about it. Beer is such an interesting touchstone for our collective denial of what we are. Far better to focus on what we think we should be. Somehow it exemplifies all the danger in life we were warned of – even though we happily live it with anyway. Weird stuff.

Group Project: The Chretien Book And Its Timing

I am now seriously considering taking down the Paul Martin posters in the rec room:

On the eve of Parliament’s re-opening, former prime minister Jean Chrétien has driven a new wedge into the federal Liberal Party with his indictment of Paul Martin as having blood on his hands over the deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Mr. Chrétien makes the charge in the just-published second volume of his memoirs, stating that because his successor “took too long to make up his mind” about what should be done with Canadian troops stationed in and around the Afghan capital of Kabul, “our soldiers were … sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar.”

That is really odd but, given the recent Mulroney book, the sort of thing we have come to expect. On a more fun yet devious level, this is clearly another ploy by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to drive a wedge in Liberal ranks. While it is unclear exactly how a wedge can be driven in something [Ed.: insert your analogy here – I recommend something scattered like or soft a gooey like a lump of butter] the effect on tomorrow’s speech from the throne is going to be dramatic/non-existent. I really enjoy these acts of maneuvering for control…much more fun than actually governing and being governed. The more the merrier.

Your job: compare and contrast.

Canada Particularly More Free Than Syracuse Today

Flipping around the channels last night after the Red Sox creamed the Indians, I saw an item on Syracuse channel 5 news that was fairly shocking: City workers were fired for living outside of City limits. Here is the story in the Post-Standard:

Eight of the 12 Syracuse city workers who were suspended Wednesday on suspicion that they were violating the city’s residency requirement were fired today after they failed to persuade city officials that they lived in within Syracuse’s borders. Three of the 12 retired, according to city Director of Personnel Donald Thompson. The 12th worker convinced the city that he did live in Syracuse. He will return to work Monday, Thompson said. A 13th worker, Eric Weber, who had been the director of the Lakefront Development Corp., was fired Wednesday. Unlike the other workers, Weber was not entitled to a hearing on his residency because he is a mayoral appointment, according to the city.

I can’t claim in any way to understand why residency is required in Syracuse. What is startling to me is how this is something that has been determined to be unconstitutional in Canada…and unconstitutional based on the “liberty” right in our Charter of Rights, a protection that has often been described as the poorer cousin to the liberty available under the constitution of the United States.

It goes back to our old pal autonomous decision making. Canada’s Supreme Court has held a number of times in a number of contexts that the right to liberty enshrined in s. 7 of the Charter protects within its ambit the right to an irreducible sphere of personal autonomy wherein individuals may make inherently private choices free from state interference. OK, I quoted that. But notice some of those words: “irreducible”, “inherently”, “free”. Good words and words that show there are bits of life that the government simply cannot govern. Within these few areas, the individual is sovereign. One of the most important statements in forming this aspect of the liberty Canadians enjoy was the 1997 Godbout ruling about where city workers near Montreal could live. In that ruling, Justice LaForest stated at paragraphs 66 and 67:

…I took the view in B. (R.) that parental decisions respecting the medical care provided to their children fall within this narrow class of inherently personal matters. In my view, choosing where to establish one’s home is, likewise, a quintessentially private decision going to the very heart of personal or individual autonomy.

The soundness of this position can be appreciated most readily, I think, by reflecting upon some of the intensely personal considerations that often inform an individual’s decision as to where to live. Some people choose to establish their home in a particular area because of its nearness to their place of work, while others might prefer a different neighbourhood because it is closer to the countryside, to the commercial district, to a particular religious institution with which they are affiliated, or to a medical centre whose services they require. Similarly, some people may, for reasons dearly important to them, value the historical significance or cultural make-up of a given locale, others again may want to ensure that they are physically proximate to family or to close friends, while others still might decide to reside in a particular place in order to minimize their cost of living, to care for an ailing relative or, as in the case at bar, to maintain a personal relationship. In my opinion, factors such as these vividly reflect the idea that choosing where to live is a fundamentally personal endeavour, implicating the very essence of what each individual values in ordering his or her private affairs; that is, the kinds of considerations I have mentioned here serve to highlight the inherently private character of deciding where to maintain one’s home. In my view, the state ought not to be permitted to interfere in this private decision-making process, absent compelling reasons for doing so.

So, since Godbout, it has been clear that the wholesale rounding up of auslanders from the suburbs is something beyond the jurisdiction and capacity of our municipalities and other levels of government. It appears that the land of the free has yet to catch up to us in this aspect of our relative liberty.

Ontario Election 2007: Harper Loses

Let me be the first to point out that, once again, my votes did not carry the day so I can assert the ability to spot a very bad stretch when I see one. And, just so I can also be among the first to point it out, between the massive win in Newfoundland yesterday for an anti-Harper Tory and today’s ditching of any vestige of a right wing agenda in Ontario, I see the message this week for the Prime Minister is not good.

If there were any chance that a leader – through some miracle, mystery or intrigue – might arise within the Liberal Party of Canada who grasps the responsibility of the demands of the nation as opposed to continuing the recent history of party obsession with in-fighting and pop causes, this might be the beginning of a golden era for them and the beginning of the end of that bit of history started by the splitting of the Tories which will end, as these things do, in ugly dismembered fashion.

But that leader is not there. What strange times.

Sour Beer Studies: Sweet, Sour And… The Brewmaster’s Table

I have been a bad beer blogger. I just got a copy of Garrett Oliver’s The Brewmaster’s Table. One baaad beer blogger. And not bad like ManRam says either. The fact is, I thought it was really more like The Brewmaster’s “Kitchen” and had expected it was more like a recipe book. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Lucy Saunders obviously does a great job at telling us how to cook with beer. But I didn’t feel drawn to another similar one.

How wrong I was. How shallow the uninquisitive mind. This is a great and valuable text. No wonder everyone recommends it. Let me be a guest late to this party. It is well laid out with sections of the traditions of the great brewing nations, a discussion of the major styles found in each, examples and their properties as well as a description of the foods that go with each. It is the table because it is what a craft brewer would (and does) place place before himself in terms of food and drink. Good. Handy.

For present purposes, though, the book provides me with one thing that no one else in my meager span of attention had mention. Many traditional sour beers – and especially the sourest – were not intended to be consumed without sweetening. See, this is what has always bugged me about lambics and gueuze. We do the medievals and thems that followed a disservice when we say that the pure raw lip puckering drink is what they would have consumed. First of all, most of them would have consumed mostly unhopped ales bittered with gruit made and swallowed within a few days. Then, few would have had access to the resources required to buy aged ale, including any which might have been aged for souring. Additionally, those that were aged were likely aged within the annual cycle as is most every other agricultural product. These general observations seem both logical and consistent with the histories by Cornell, Haydon, Hornsey and Unger. Plus I have another pet theory – no one drinks extremely sour things without a certain purpose and sour in beer has long standing recognition as a failing in brewing.

But I have gone over that before in these sour beer studies. What is new is the mention made of one tradition of Belgian lambic drinkers – as opposed to its brewers – described in The Brewmaster’s Table. At page 71, comparing dry lambics to their sweet siblings, Oliver states:

Lambic afficiandos are given to frothing at the mouth when the latter versions are mentioned, but I feel both types have their place. Don’t forget that some people always sweetened their beers, when they could afford it – sugar was once a luxury.

Sadly, I can not longer wallow in vindication dancing the merry jig as these studies have given me both respect and a taste for the sour beers of Belgium. I still find Cantillon too stark but that is like saying Guinness is too dark. It simply is. And sour for me now holds an interesting and worthy place in the beery pantheon.

But, still, there is comfort knowing that now and likely in the past people did not suffer austere acidity except as a mild fetish or a consequence of poverty. Two traditional styles, neither of which I have tried as they are quite localized, confirm how sweetening may have been undertaken, Berliner weisse and faro. Berliner weisse is a German sour brew uniformly taken with a sweet fruity syrup and preserving sweets is entirely reasonable as a form of storage though the centuries. I would expect that facing another pitcher of dry lambic before him on the table, your average 16th centurian may well have had a spoon in the jelly or honey jar next to it. In addition to Berliner weisse, Belgian faro is described as a “low-alcohol, slightly sweet table beer made from lambic to which brown sugar has been added” – taken on draft, again, it is a reasonable approach to making a rather restrictive brew more approachable for the many.

Point? I am relieved to find this confirmation from somewhere that lambics were sweetened by drinkers in much the same way as the old guys shook the salt over their draft in the Nova Scotian taverns of my youth. People, as we learned from Depeche Mode, are people. Other point? Buy The Brewmaster’s Table.

Make My Vote One For MMP!

First let me say well done Danny. Any Tory who is anti-Tory is my kind of Tory. Maybe he tries for NL independence next.

And it is now clear that I am voting for MMP because no one else is. Most people I know who are intelligent and well-informed are not, through the pure badness of the MMP campaign, aware of the fixed lists that parties would have to submit and so are turned off by the prospect of back-room shuffling. I, on the other hand, see the world as it truly is (am I the only one???) and know that this is no different than the status quo in any case. Plus I never vote for a winner. Not out of principle but due to my principles. Plus-plus it would just be dumb to have MPPs voted in through MMP.

MMP! MMP! MMP! MMP!

To The Cubs, To The Cubs, To The Cubs, Cubs, Cubs!

A late night at work saw me driving for home at around eleven with 660 AM WFAN and the callers bringing out the Long knives for the Yankees. Who was to blame? Torre? A-Rod? Wang? Even Posada was a target. Apparently one person is not likely waiting around to find out:

A clubhouse attendant packed the belongings from Alex Rodriguez’s locker into cardboard boxes yesterday, in what may have been a sign that Rodriguez did not plan to visit Yankee Stadium anytime soon. He may never return as a member of the Yankees because he seems sure to exercise the opt-out clause in his contract. While the agent Scott Boras did not specifically say that Rodriguez would opt out with three years left on his 10-year, $252 million contract, he suggested that becoming a free agent again would be his client’s savviest choice.

“When the arbitrator gave free agency to baseball, is there anyone in baseball who the free-agent right meant more to than Alex Rodriguez?” Boras said yesterday. “Not with his last contract, but right now, now more than any point in history.”

You would think free agency value would coincide with actual on the game day value. Is that A-Rod? Sure he is great and has tthe stats but…umm…I’d prefer someone who plays well in the playoffs? I can think of four Red Sox right now who are more valuable than A-Rob and I don’t think I even need to mention them. Who else puts up lower numbers but is of more actual value? Byrd, Cleveland’s fourth pitcher the other night, the man who beat the Yanks, comes to mind with his literally throw-back style of pitching.

Anyway, A-Rod, good luck in your likely destination of Chicargo, as we called it as kids, making kissy-eyes with Lou. Likely you will disappoint there as well.

Was That A Boring First Round?

Was the first round of the MLB playoffs boring? With one game avoiding a four series sweep across the board, hard to argue otherwise. Frankly, I don’t care much about Arizona v. Colorado in the NL championships either. But The Sox and Cleveland starting Friday night could be amazing. Both teams are making runs happen but in very different ways. It certainly could be the most bunt friendly series in decades and a game with Wakefield pitching against Byrd with neither getting the ball above 90 mph would be wonderful if both were at their best.

But pause a moment for the Yankees who exited yesterday. There was an outpouring of tears after the game on 880 AM with Suzyn Waldman choking up, John saying he loved her, Damon (pittuie!) using the past tense in relation to the team and Joe Torre walking into an era where he can write a bigger cheque as any team’s manager or any station’s broadcaster. They out performed themselves in 2007 so should feel good about themselves as they now go off to play for other teams. Who shall they buy for next year?