Author: Alan

My New Conspiracy

During my weekend newspaper and magazine reading, I kept coming across references to politicial blogging and its new found effectiveness or perhaps just acknowledgement. KOS was referenced somewhere in the New York Times without much explanation of what he was. The latest issue of maissonneuve had an article called “A Blogger on Blogging” by Maud Newton. On top of that there was lots about the discourse generally, the presence of Pajamastan.

So if the pop culture is getting all substantive about blogs, sooner or later they will get co-opted, bought-out, sponsored. Sooner or later, someone will drop a bomb via a blog and it will turn out, like controversial medical research going against the grain, that BigCo was behind it all the time. The supposed independent voice will turnout to be coming from a cubicle in a farm of bloggers, all supported by wage or grant and a policy guide defining what must and must not be said.

Has this happened yet? How can I get in on it?

National Six-Pack III: Labatt 50, Quebec

fifty50. portland asked me to. And worst of all, this is actually a case…which I can never remember what they call in Ontario where a case is really a two-four. In Halifax, a case was 12. I don’t know what I will do with the other eleven. A slice of lime won’t even make it a Molrona as this is from Labatts.

50 was exotic in the early 80s Maritimes. You paid a premium under the category “western beer”. Why? Twelve years ago I might have had a few quarts of 50 on Friday night at the Lockmaster in Ottawa listening to bands. Having brewed my own beer for a long time, a beer like this stands out for its cheap ingredients – rough hops, sourish yeast and that funny coated feeling on your lips brewer’s sugar leaves behind. Here is one Minnesotan beer advocatonian‘s take:

This is pretty much a bizzarro world beer. Answers the question “What would an ale taste like if it was made by a macro brewer?” And it’s just as bad as a macro lager, maybe even worse. Flavor smells grainy, musty, and only faintly of the hops that a Pale Ale should have. Barely any hops at all, tastes pretty much labatt blue. It is crap. Since only respectable brewers pretty much make PA’s, against the style this is the bottom of the barrel. I feel bad that I could have gotten a 6 pack of summit, schell, flying dog, goose island, or many other far superior pale ales for the price. If ever offered one, just say “no.”

Twenty years ago Harpers magazine ran an article on the Seattle micro-brewing scene which ended with the reaction of one beer lover having a mass produced beer after a number of micros. He said “did I miss my mouth?”. This sets the benchmark for the low end of the Canadian pale ale scale…but you know I bet it doesn’t, if you really hunted them out. I won’t be bothering. I have my eye on Kawartha Lakes Pale Ale or Big Rock Traditional for the next examination of our national pale ale heritage.

I think I remember that 50 goes well as a red eye with V-8. It’ll be ok.

How Kerry Could Win

Here is a wicked thought. Kerry wins electoral college and loses the popular vote. Because the President is so heavily supported in many states but each state is won on a first past the post system, the extra extra votes are useless. They do not make him win anymore. Here is the percentage lead Bush holds in each of his top three states:

  • Texas (34 electoral votes) 21%
  • Florida (27 electoral votes) 5%
  • Georgia (15 electoral votes) 19%

If you look at the western plains, West of Iowa and east of the west coast states, many of the states are lead by Bush by over 20%. By comparison, Kerry will win the 55 electoral college votes in California by a lead of under 10% and the 31 of New York by just a little more.

Wouldn’t it be sweet of the White House were to be won by Kerry in the same way Bush won it?

Hey Parliament!

Don’t make me vote again this year. I heard Harper say that his agenda was “frankly supported by the majority of Canadians” even though he got 29% of the vote in June. Nothing has changed. If you make us vote for you before the Liberals have done anything, you will see 5 seats in Quebec go to the Liberals, you will see a couple in Ontario go to the Liberals, you will see a few percentage points move NDP from Green and that will likely put the NDP into the low twenty seat range and, pooff, there goes Harper’s dreams of power. From today’s Toronto Star:

The Liberals were huddling last night to assess whether the raft of proposed changes would amount to a fundamental rewriting of the Martin government’s blueprint for minority rule. The choice rests with this shaky minority government to reject the changes as a threat or accept them, in whole or in part, which would in effect allow opposition parties to have a hand in designing the governing plan. A throne speech has only been successfully changed by the opposition twice in the history of the Canadian Parliament; in 1899 and in 1951, and the changes in both cases were minimal.
The vote on the Bloc gambit takes place later today, and if Government House Leader Tony Valeri judges the proposed changes to be a sharp shift in the Liberals’ chosen path, the Commons will be in a mad scramble around 6 p.m. as the three-month old government tries to hold on to its precarious control of Parliament. A loss by the Liberals in this case would amount to collapse of the Martin’s barely-begun government.

Don’t make us vote again, Mssrs Tory and Separatist alliance. All that you have shown in the last three months is that you two, the Alberta and Quebec independentistas, have much in common and that is the thing that most Canadians will agree upon.

Christmas Giving Idea

While reviewing my spelling issues in relation to the Washington Greys Grays post, I discovered the loveliness of this jersey for the Pittsburgh Keystones, a Negro League baseball team from the era of segregation of sports in the US. I am sure you will agree I deserve one – in XXL, please. They only played in 1887 and again in 1922, according to this list. I am not sure whether the shirt comes from the earlier or later period. The first date is fairly early in the racial division of the game which lasted from 1871 to 1947. The Pittsburgh Keystones came second in the 1888 “Colored Championships of America” after the Cuban Giants.