Category: Uncategorized

Group Project: Should There Be Different Grades Of Sorry?

I have to admit I know so little about the background that I am somewhat unsure what tho think about the recent incident of the Prime Minister’s apology. But perhaps you have an opinion on what happened:

…Mr. Harper ignored their advice. He offered the apology and left the stage immediately afterward, without waiting to see if his host would deliver the pre-arranged thank you speech. Jaswinder Singh Toor, the grandson of a passenger on the Komagata Maru who was sent back to India, said he was shocked to hear Mr. Harper’s comments “It was unbelievable,” he said, adding that he did not understand why the Indo-Canadian community was not treated in the same fashion as Chinese and Japanese communities that have received apologies for historic wrongs. “Only the Indo-Canadians are being treated differently,” he said. “This is not right.”

It is often said that Mr. Harper does not suffer fools greatly but that I think is a bit of a euphemism. It certainly does not mean he has a license to be unkind and ungracious as he represents my nation as opposed to his personal opinion. Leaving abruptly would seem to be unkind and ungracious.

But has he been placed in an unfair spiral of expectation? The one man cannot be expected to wear the entire mantle of representation of the national government. He may have played a big part in creating the expectation that he is his own PR representative, the figurehead as well as the leader of the administration. For a person who wants to weaken and decentralize the land, he sure likes the strength of centralization of authority. Ought this outreach to communities and history be the job of the Governor General or even the next Royal visit? If it is left to a politician – any politician – is there not a risk of the consideration of an important historic matter becoming politicized?

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Things I Didn’t Know About Until Today

When you think about it, blogs really should be just Friday Bullets. No one really wants to know the half-baked opinions of strangers. No one really is interested in how many ways the unhappy and unintelligent drop-outs and dopes who post comments can insult. They want to know about the stuff that fills the internet that, frankly, anyone would get along fine without ever knowing. Stuff like:

  • The contribution of Alan Blumlein to the invention of stereo sound is only now starting to be appreciated.
  • The RCMP spied on Rita MacNeil.
  • The cops are also after an Olsen twin.
  • Someone at The Globe and Mail actually thinks “Canadian team invades Beijing” is a good headline.
  • People apparently think customers paying for cell phone spam is good business.
  • The Calgary Herald apparently believes that calling an argument a myth is enough to refute it in an partisan editorial written in the 1908-ish style…or one borrowed from bloggers.
  • A man in Bulgaria had the equivalent of 60 beer before driving and then blowing 0.851 – over ten times the Canadian limit.
  • Obama’s lead in the polls may have vanished and advising to keep your tires inflated likely won’t help.

There might be more. There always is. And if Obama is actually in the pocket of big tire gauge industry, expect that to be the thing that swings the presidential election more than anything else.

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I Am Confused About China

So do we like the Chinese government or not? Apparently, Mr. Harper may be suffering from some indecision on the matter, allowing a policy to be defined – imagine! – by someone else:

“We’ve got a trajectory of diplomatic and other kinds of activities that we are laying out in front of us and I look forward to starting to put that together,” Mr. Emerson said in his first lengthy television interview since taking over his new role [as Foreign Minister]. Mr. Emerson is known to be a proponent of a strong relationship with China. His view differs from some Harper cabinet ministers and caucus members who are focused on human rights and want to emphasize that over trade. His appointment was seen by some as an indication that Mr. Harper was trying to improve the China-Canada relationship. “I think that the relationship with China is one that we’ve been cultivating and improving for some time now and my appointment certainly does not get in the way of that, but I don’t think it’s a signal of any profound change in foreign policy,” he said.

I seem to recall that the China-Canada relationship was all tickity-boo prior to the election of 2006, what with all Chretien’s Pacific rim and trade mission policy focussy stuff. But Emerson would know that, being a former Liberal cabinet minister. And I seem to recall it was Mr. Harper who made things a wee bit “who left the fridge door open?”

So have we now confirmed that Canadian policy is to call placing human rights before trade ridiculous in all contexts? Or is this yet another reversion to Chretien era policy with the hope of a Chretien era majority?

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Friday Bullets For The First Of August

Can you believe it’s August already? Can you believe the decade is almost over? This is crazy. Who sped up the clock? August is a month that is quite remarkable for standing for not much. Has anything remarkable happened in August? Here is a list of things that happened on this date. Hey, in 860 the Peace of Koblenz was signed by Charles the Bare, Louis the German and Lotharius II. Why didn’t I think of Lotharius when I was naming the boy?

  • I have written about Manny many times. I will write about him no more, however, as Manny is now a player for the Dodgers. Jason Bay, however, is a player for the Red Sox. I trust back bacon sandwiches and maple syrup laced cocktails are the order of the day where you are today.
  • I don’t cross pollinate the beer blog posts over here but this is a great example of DadLit.
  • Lawless? Would this be the same colonial French who in the 1680s took the leaders of the Iroquois nation invited to meet in Kingston, caged them and sent them to be galley slaves?
  • I like it when Harper stays away from policy and just taunts. He is better at mean than bright.
  • I hate the new Google little icon. I’ve looked at the damn lower case purple “g” for, what, a couple of months now and I swear it’s the stupidest logo I have ever seen. I’d ask them why they did swtiched from the old “g” but…
  • A great primer on the rainbow pitch.

Well, that is enough for today. What do you want from me? Find a TV set to watch the Sox v. Oakland today. Watch Jason Bay get a standing ovation and then watch him quietly play great baseball.

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Is Obama Really The Next Paris Hilton?

While I have to admit I still really have no idea what the policies of an administration led by Mr. Obama might look like, I really had no idea that this sort of thing was what would be going on:

After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Mr. Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency. On Wednesday alone, the McCain campaign released a new advertisement suggesting — and not in a good way — that Mr. Obama was a celebrity along the lines of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Is this unfair? Is there a ring of truth? I think the contrived protests that “the media ♥ Obama” are whacked. When did it dawn on those unhappy with his popularity that popularity is a factor in the political game? When did it dawn on them that the media is the conduit for information? What will be the charge against him next – that he is maybe anti-Bush? But is he really Paris Hilton?

Still…there is that “change” thing. As I was a wee laddie in the Maritimes I was familiar with the scenario of an opposition party facing a well-entrenched well-operating government and campaigning on “time for a change”. Whoop-tee-doo. Meaninglessness. So is this “change” of Obama’s the same as that “change”? Can we identify yet what change means?

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Friday Bullets For Stay-cation Week

Well, I suppose that the promised break in the days of rain that have been mid-July in Easlakia has to stand for something. I can’t think when I last took a summer week off and did not load the family for somewhere – which is just as well as a van full of damp is not a happy van. It has been a time of napping and of reading something other than the glowing screen. I did not home repair. Of that you can be truly proud.

  • Byelection Fever Update: About 1% of the Canadian electorate go to the polls on 8 September. Woooot!!! This is what we have been waiting for.
  • Ben is proxy blogging Berlin. I hear we need change.
  • What do you think about the fence?
  • My new found status as Canada’s sixth most popular political blogger demands that I make some obtuse observations on the state of doings in Ottawa. Except nothing seems to be going on. Who cares about election plans – I want substance. But aside from the general quality of Federal leadership, there seems to be only one big issue: carbon tax. I still think this is a yawner and a loser for whoever gets marked with the green tint. It shouldn’t be so but as there are no strong answers yet, proposing the unpopular and the unlikely-to-succeed is seldom a yellow brick road to a majority hold on Parliament. And it’s no more than a plank at best. We need more.
  • So which Federal issues deserve more airplay?? The recent premiers’ gathering raised the prospect of actual steps towards First Nations reconciliation. Wouldn’t that be nice of real steps were taken towards that national quandary? How about infrastructure – Ottawa and Toronto have made nice to buy bridges and buses. But do you run an election on that? Rideology not ideology??
  • Al Purdy’s cottage is for sale. Owning that would be rather neato.
  • This week’s weather shattered the promise of a massive harvest for a lot of Ontario fruit growers. Hailstorms. We need to start the “Buy A Peach With A Bruise” campaign. Why do all the farmer’s protests have to be around the combine harvesters? Who’s behind this anyway?
  • Apparently the oversight committee decided to lay off hitting each other in the head with hammers. Who thought that was ever a good idea?

Full disclosure: I wrote most of this Thursday. Between the dodgy internet access and my new found love for not being up at 6:15 am, I thought it would be prudent to plan ahead so as to ensure you desk jockeys have your moments of bulletty bliss at the crack of dawn.

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Friday Bullets Without The Pain…Except For The Pain

I need a new back today. Despite the sit up and other exertions of unbelievable dedication, the back still goes. And it is quite prepared to go before just before the summer holiday begins. Such is life. Good thing I plan to do nothing.

  • Nevermind those who 3% of folk who think George W. Bush will be well remembered by history. He’s going to be considered a goofball if his final words to the G8 are anything to go by: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” He has to plan that sort of thing. That can’t be what he’s coming up with off the cuff.
  • I wish Google had reviewed the whole fewer and better ads thing with me. See that over there down to the right? Who am I to complain about who give me that big $350 bucks a year?
  • The Mets: 10 for their last 10.
  • I have never liked Paul McCartney that much so I guess I am with that 0.3% of Quebecers who are unhappy. Surely he is not the biggest act in the world, surely they could have gotten Plastic Bertrand.
  • Kottke noted a great illustration of the disutility of information technology this week. Because the information was not sortable by the critical factor, availability of restaurant seats, the application is practically useless.
  • No other politician generated more dancable tunes, though no ska that I know of. Happy birthday, Nelson!

My got to explore the home pharmacy some more. I understand one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. But which is which?

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The Barenaked Witness Statement

I sometimes wonder why Canadian news media report on the reporting of things. So often the CBC or major papers go out and find out what person X thinks about or can explain about what happened to person Y. There is a level of abstraction that isn’t the case elsewhere. As you likely know, I watch local Watertown NY news in the morning – initially for a better sense of the weather and now for all those fun police reports. It’s amazing how much pre-conviction detail is set out for the public, servicing as both information about the workings of the court justice system as well as a conduit for that oft stated goal of justice, general deterrence.

The arrest of Barenaked Ladies singer Stephen Page in nearby Fayetteville, NY, an easter suburb of Syracuse, is a good case in point. The Globe and Mail include excerpts from the statement given by Page’s girlfriend’s roommate while The Star gives only a summary. Syracuse’s Post Standard, however, has a far fuller and more detailed account:

Ford’s statement to police provides the following account: The two women walked to the bar about 10 p.m. About 11 p.m., Page showed up. “After about 30 minutes, Steven and Christine got into a huge fight because Christine was flirting with another guy. Steven left the bar and I followed him back to the apartment,” Ford told police. Page said that he was going back to Canada, but Ford was concerned because Page had been drinking. Back at the apartment, Page lay down on the grass and Ford sat on him so he couldn’t drive away. “While we were on the front lawn, Christine showed up and started yelling at me not to take Steven’s side. I’m not sure how it happened but Christine ended up with Steven’s keys and drove away in his car leaving hers in the middle of the driveway,” Ford said. Page and Ford went inside the home. Eventually, Ford found Page at the kitchen table with a bottle that said “calcium” and contained capsules with white powder, but the rest of the label was in French. “There was a pile of white powdery substance on the table, near one of the capsules,” Ford said. “There was a Canadian bill on the table which Steven rolled up and we used it to snort the white powder. “We never discussed what the white powder was but I thought it was cocaine,” she said.

What have we learned? The abstraction of celebrity and perhaps a measure of national embarrassment, things I think may be fueling the abstraction in the Canadian press, are not there. But neither is the unspoken menace. It’s a pretty banal scene and the participants appear co-operative. People are trying to do the right thing, keeping the incapable off the road, while doing the wrong thing. The comments to the Syracuse news article are interesting as well.

This may well be a more serious matter than we are learning about in Canada. The are articles about how the business of the band will be affected, a matter Canadian media is somewhat invested in given all the spin-off radio and TV shows the band have generated. Is that projecting an actual Canadian cultural point of view? The view from Fayetteville Village Court is likely less engaged in that respect. And look at this opinion piece from 2007 about sentencing inequality in New York – a ten gram possession appears to attract years of incarceration, though this snippet may indicate months. This may be a far more serious matter than we are being told.

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Out! Out! Damn Tiny Substances!!!

We live in a time of great fear. Terrorism. Financial instability. Food security…or is that now “nutrisekur”? Well, here’s one more – tiny substances:

A blue-ribbon scientific panel has waved a yellow flag in front of a rapidly expanding number of products containing nanomaterials, cautioning that the tiny substances might be able to penetrate cells and interfere with biological processes…Their small size, the report says, may allow them “to usurp traditional biological protective mechanisms” and, as a result, possibly have “enhanced toxicological effects.”

Yeeouch! Bad enough that they may have toxicological effects but these ones are enhanced! I really hope this is not all about the industrial dusty cheesy coating on snack foods. That stuff is really tiny but tangy and tasty, too. Note that one conclusion of the study is that “there are inadequate data to inform quantitative risk assessments on current and emerging nanomaterials.” Hmm. So they may not really know. Note, too, that there is no apparent reference to that Wired magazine article from before a few bubble economies ago called “Why the future doesn’t need us” in which Bill Joy argued that 21st-century technologies like genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) would be so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. It’s always a good bit of reading for those wanting to get scared out of their skins what with sentences like: “if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?”

Yowza! But what about my cheese dust? If we are witnessing the end of life on earth through our own incompetent worship of the blind progress of science, I want cheese dusty snacks on the way out.

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