Category: Uncategorized

Group Project: So If Doom ’09 Is Really Over…

… Did the stimulus work? Here’s what you need to think… because that’s my job. Telling you what to think:

  • Why not say so? Why can’t we take a little pride in the fact that a little government intervention did the trick? Tax dollars in action.
  • What was the alternative? Did you really fall in with those dopes on the far right who wanted stimlus to fail? What would that do? Hurt your neighbour, your town, yourself? How far does the smug satisfaction of ideological purity get us all?
  • I want to look forward to the next new bubble economy. I want green cars and windmills not so much for what they do as what they provide – an active economy. If it were up to me, gas lawn mowers would be outlawed and everyone (else) would go buy a push mower. Open the push mower factory doors wide!
  • Do you really want a Federal election based on doubt and fear? Frankly, I am happy as all get out without a bunch of newbies getting into office for the next year or so. Sure lets have a fall 2010 election but that’s only two years for the Tories in office in Ottawa. They’ve even finally got the hang of playing a bit nice with Ontario. Look – they may be goofy and tick off Jay but they also seem harmless, right??
  • Best of all, we get to call out the naysayers and tell them that the economy works, that we are not facing the collapse of market based mixed socialist capitalism and that they are ‘fraidy cats. Nothing worse that economic friady cats.

We need post-recession street parties. Jingles about whipping the nation back into shape. Just like we live in a post-post 9/11 world, we also may be living in a post recession one, too, now. Bring back the happy songs. Bring back cake on Tuesdays at lunch.

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Friday Bullets For The Week At The Beach

Not so much bullets as things noted:

  • Chowder is something to do when it rains.
  • That guy in Double A baseball who is the next big thing may well not be.
  • Banjos can be valued for their good trade-in potential.
  • My feet will freckle if I just give them the chance.
  • Those screams you hear at waterslide amusement parks include the sounds of terrified 46 year olds.

Links? Maybe next week. It’s not like I looked at the internet much this week.

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Friday Bullets For The Last Of Spring

So how did spring 2009 turn out? We hardly judge them, springs. They are a gift after the bleak second half of winter. They convey none of the foreboding that can even creep in around mid-July. It’s all give, give, give. Except it was cold. We had the air conditioning on for one day the whole time. I fully expect to be obviously sweating in public by the end of May. Not pretty but it’s what I’ve come to expect. Nature can be so disappointing.

  • Married Priest Update: but this time it’s OK.
  • I do hope they ban Cheddar soon in Quebec, too, as the particular tang of English cheese might also lend some support to the destruction of culture as we know it.
  • Zombie croquet
  • The level of dumbness that arises of not having a two-party state in the culture can be quite startling.
  • I don’t particularly have a hackle raised by the theocrats of Iran (subject to bombing any nuke-ish facility without notice) but the clerics do look a bit silly when they try to explain themselves. But I like this slogan: “Every single Iranian is valuable. Government is a service to all.” Nothing like a chill down the spine to clarify the mind.
  • I wouldn’t aim a missile at Hawaii. Not me. No good comes of that.
  • Heard on NPR this morning: the trillion dollar health bill adds up to three boxes of girl guide cookies per person per day. Plus it is an extra trillion over ten years representing a 100 billion annual increase on 2.2 trillion annual health spending. thought it was a trillion over one year. I am still not sure if it is net or gross costs. No skin off my nose but that waitress in Maine who said she was spending $650 per month on health insurance back around 1994? It’ll matter to her.

Must run. Learning day. Fridays are so much nicer when there is less learning.

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The Problem With Averaging

This is the problem with averaging: June’s more than half done which means it’s almost over which means it’s almost July which means the year’s half done which means which means it’s almost over which means it’s almost 2010 which means the decade without a name is almost over. By this logic I am already dead but as the pace of the years picks up as – in where the hell did 2000-2009 as a ten year span go – that is exactly what seems to be happening. So In need a counter-pressure. I need to imagine the process in reverse where nothing quite achieves itself. Then I’ll slow time. It might be easier in the southern hemisphere. Simple.

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Oh, To Be In England With All The Cameras There

Oh, to be a automated camera salesman, too. Sounds like the nation has gone mad what with the checking up upon itself:

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a “marker” on his car. That meant he was added to a “hotlist”. This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit. “I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?” Sussex police would not talk about the case.

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, that the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf round the elm-tree bole are with tiny lens, while the police view from the orchard in England – now!

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Come Along – Let Google Do The Thinking For You

Remember when there was the whole “calculators in class” argybargy back when wideleg jeans were out before they were in again but after the second time they were out? Well, Lord Goog may be setting up a similar non-mathematical quandary:

One of the more experimental products was called Google Squared, which will go public in the next month or so. It takes information from the web and displays it in a spreadsheet in “split seconds”, something Ms Mayer said would normally take someone half a day to do. During the demonstration, a query for “small dog” was typed into the search box. Seconds later a table popped up showing photographs of various dogs, their origin, weight and height in a clear and simple layout.

Sounds like homework done in a snap to me. Of course, on one level this is good and really just a tabular representation of a results sheet that drags information from Google images, news and general web searches. And it will demonstrate the importance of gathering and sorting different classes of data into useful format. But it will also carry the air of authority so that there will be tension with the idea of improving on Google’s presentation as well as the problem of knowing to what degree the analysis presented is purely based on Google and what is the individuals.

Should we care? Should figuring stuff out and digging for information be valued even if the results are a bit like a nine year old’s take on a pancake breakfast, messy and less than appetizing?

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Can You Make A Map About Nothing?

Ruk is a helpful person. Far more helpful than I ever am. This weekend he posted about how you can create a Google map to collaboratively and graphically and geographically display information about something. Trouble is… I write on a blog and have been writing on this blog for six years and about two weeks but I don’t really think it is about anything. So, I am creating a map to see what would go on a map collaboratively and graphically and geographically to display information about nothing.

It will take time to either fill or be forgotten. I have invited a number of people to try to play with this but also have made collaboration public, too. Click here to get to the map if you care to watch or play amateur cartographer. And read Ruk’s instructions for how to participate. Remember at step 5 to press “edit” to make that blue water droplet icon for creating new information.

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Friday For The First Stinking Hot Weekend

It’s the meteorological chitchat that keeps you coming back. I know it. We spend so much time looking forward to a bright hot day that you would think we would record them in binders like family albums, categorized by how nice the breezes were or how long the evening seemed to last. Tomorrow bodes very well. Perhaps 80F in April on a sunny Saturday. 70F this Friday evening. This very day. It’s the anti-blizzard weekend. The one you wanted on a Tuesday in late January.

  • I sure love it when people who accuse others of having no moral compass then have to admit that the guy was pretty much right. Oh, what a giggle we will have in the next era when we look back on these times.
  • I would have thought the whole “eating a replica of our bodies” might have been a bigger issue than the name.
  • SPACE BLOB!!!
  • I thought this was pretty funny. When to worry about the IT geeks planning to control your lives? When they say “…people are passionate about your product…” or “IZ: You mean enhance civilization, make it even better?” you know someone is quite enraptured by an impending cash-in.
  • In the same vein, when someone says “Can we just retire this stupid line of questioning once and for all?” after referring to “the straw man” you may need to realize they are facing an argument they don’t want to admit is lost due to the weight it places on the possibility of being enraptured by an impending cash-in.
  • Sometimes the things that got cashed-in die and, quite surprisingly, take 675 employees. Can you believe GeoCIties was bought for 2.9 billion ten years ago?
  • Not necessarily my deepest love with a french fry van – I reserve that for Colburne’s of Pembroke, Ontario – but certainly my first. Sitting on the wall at the Halifax central library having a Bud the Spud was a big part of my youth.
  • Why are we not hearing news item after news item about how Ford saw this coming, may well never ask for a penny of public money, is about to crush its competition through sheer prudence and actually makes cars people buy?

And you may ask yourself how do I work this BBQ? You may ask yourself where is my suntan lotion? And you may ask yourself where does that garden path go? Is this my beautiful yard?

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What Is A Canadian Citizenship Worth?

Quite a number of years ago, I check out a cousin’s child’s right to Canadian citizenship and, as the person in question was born somewhere else, they needed to assert their Canadianness before a certain date or lose it. Apparently the rules will tighten tomorrow:

April 17 marks the implementation of a new rule created by the Canadian government. If you are a Canadian living overseas, passing on your citizenship will now become more difficult: Your children won’t get a Canadian passport unless one of their parents was either born in Canada, or had become a citizen by immigrating into Canada. Many Canadians are up in arms about this, ex-pats in particular. But I didn’t even know about the rule changes until a friend in Toronto forwarded me a mass-circulated protest e-mail. The message vilifies the policy, suggesting that all children of Canadian have a “right” to Canadian citizenship — no matter where they are born — and is accompanied by the obligatory petition to sign and forward.

I have a second nationality so this sort of scrutiny does not seem odd to me. In the 80s, I applied for and got UK right of abode. Under the current UK rules, I am pretty sure l am able to still apply for full citizenship based on family ties but that is not absolutely clear to me due to the complexity of the rules. Plus, I may have to show I am of good character. I hope I qualify. Maybe these bloggy posts would be my downfall.

I think these sorts of things are good. I am reminded of that by the scandal in PEI related to the selling of citizenships leading to an impossible but for-profit local explosion of immigrant investors which has come to the point that a Minister of the Crown has told people involved to retain lawyers. Those out of pocket may have to wait years to even get their papers.

Wouldn’t it be better if we had a firm set of rules around these things and rules that were actually administered by the level of government responsible for citizenship? Wouldn’t it be nice to know your citizenship is worth something, that I have been part of a process that relates to, you know, ideas like good character?

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