Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Group Project: McCain’s Visit To Ottawa

I don’t usually get caught up in the bashing of various news sources. The Toronto Star gets its share of grief from folks with a variety of levels with incoherent thought – leaving the brighter stuttering when they see the error of their ways. But this column/article/piece, for me, is worth a bit of finger pointery:

He brings to Canada his message that Barack Obama’s desire to unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement damages relations between steadfast allies and he will highlight the benefits of the trilateral deal in his speech Friday at an Ottawa hotel. The Conservative government in Ottawa and the Canadian Embassy in Washington are seeking as much cover as possible from the McCain visit, but the optics hurt Prime Minister Stephen Harper and everyone around him. Having the man most Canadians would see as the embodiment of the third George W. Bush term extolling your policies is no favour for the Conservative government.

Most Canadians?!? First, I would think most Canadians really have no opinion on McCain and his position on Canadian policy. Most Canadians think BBQ is a chicken wiener on a hibachi. We like to talk up how much we know about the US but most Canadians are fairly ignorant generally of our neighbour’s governance and specifically who John McCain is. Second, Canadians will gush because US breakfast TV shows may be broadcasting from Canada. Nothing excites Canucks as much as being noticed by US media. Canada could be on fire from coast-to-coast but, as long as there were US camera crews up here, there would be a silver lining. Third, Canada has done very well under trade agreements – as long as we didn’t have an artificially inflated dollar primed by speculators pumping up the cost of a barrel of oil to the benefit of the few.

So why do the optics hurt – why would Harper hide? – well, you know other than he seems to always hide as a first tactic. Sure his policies are a bit anti-trade, ensuring the short term gains for commodity vendors are undermining the solid economic gains made for twenty years in the 80 cent dollar world. Even if you aren’t conservative don’t you like your conservatives standing up for themselves proudly?

Or maybe it’s because McCain was an activist for funding reform and bipartisan cooperation. Maybe it’s because McCain is the sort of politician who Canadians want – engaging and fiscally conservative but a bit of a red Tory in some areas social and libertarian in others. Maybe it’s because McCain knows how to smile. Maybe because side-by-side Harper does not look as good to Canadians as his putative US right-wing counterpart.

We Live in George Carlin’s Joke

About 35 years ago when George Carlin used to appear on TV’s Sonny and Cher Show and things like that, he used to pretend he was doing a TV news anchor man reporting on quirky items – the sort of thing SNL ripped off a few years later. Once he told this joke: “Scientists have discovered that saliva causes cancer – but fortunately only when taken in small amounts over a long period of time.”

The Web 2.0 Ideas That Won’t Go Away

How do you know that Web 2.0 is past, long gone and uninteresting? Reading yet another article about how the law needs to be changed to allow people to do things that no one wants to do anymore:

Earlier this month, some fans of the NBC television programs American Gladiators and Medium found themselves unable to digitally record the shows on their personal computers. The reason for the blocked recordings raises important technical and legal questions about the rights of consumers to “time shift” television programs in the digital era. The blocked recordings affected people that record television programs on their personal computers using the Microsoft Windows Vista Media Centre. Most people are unaware that Microsoft has inserted a feature that allows a broadcaster or content owner to stop the digital recording of a show by triggering a “broadcast flag” that specifies its preference the show not be recorded. When the user tries to record it, Microsoft’s software recognizes the flag and issues a warning that the program cannot be recorded.

So? None of them paid a license fee for the right to record the show and, in any event, it’s American Gladiators for God’s sake. If anyone thinks we need to law of copyright to be altered so that folks can bootleg a hack summer repeat of a 1980s joke, they need their head examined. The things that have not taken off and become part of general society like mashing-up, creative common licenses, YouTube, podcasting, Facebook and (frankly) blogging as anything other than internet diarizing are not vicitms of copyright law but illustrations why we do not need to tamper with the law to respond to another short-term trend. Legislators don’t rush to fnid out what the hobbyists are up to.

And have you noticed that no innovation of the internet is not really having an effect on the US Presidential election?

Victoria Day’s Weekend’s Very Own Bullets

May two-fer. That is the level to which the legacy of England’s fourth best
Queen has been relegated. Drunks at the cabin. I know one. He’s there already.
While I prepare to go to my day’s labour. It’s going to rain all weekend, too.
No gardening for me and less fishing for the man in the cabin with 56 cans of
beer to work his way through.

  • Update: isn’t the
    proper discription     “murdered child with bomb strapped to body”? When we
    rightly speak of the Canadian role keeping schools open, it’s this kid that we
    are trying to keep in the school.

  • Computer solitaire is the
    most successful program of all time. Who knew?

  • Be warned. The CRTC
    is rethinking     it’s lack of justisdiction over the internet. In 1999 they
    realized they should have nothing to do with it but they are now fudging the
    point holding:

    services consisting predominantly of alphanumeric
    text and those with the potential for significant user customization do not
    “involve the transmission of programs for reception by the public and are,
    therefore, not broadcasting.”

    If we could all just stick to the
    keyboard please. I can’t imagine the botch the CRTC would create.

  • Bad week for the control freaks in the PMO:

    In any other time, these would be the most incompetent politicians. Sadly,
    they are only #2 in that race. But for the Liberal policy of letting the Tories
    hang themselves. Seems to be working.

  • Realist Caesarian art found in river because
    who wanted to be associated with Julie after the assasination.

  • Jesus won’t like this.

Read
some McGonagall
today if you have the time. A fitting celebration of Victoria’s gift of
repression of all that is good.

The One Set Of Friday Bullets You’ll Need Today

May. Almost mid-May. This is the best part of the year, right? Is there anything better than the pre-black-fly world? It’s like mosquitoes (is there an “e”?) don’t exist, let alone wasps and hornets. It’s still all about the plants but not quite yet the mowing. May is a time of imagination.

  • You know what may is? May is the time for thinking about the things you will never do this summer. Like going to that bluegrass festival with mass banjo instruction. My inner novice banjo star would do so well at that sort of thing. But there might be bugs.
  • Good to see the powers of the surveillance crime controllers are entirely misplaced:

    In becoming the world’s most-watched nation, Britain was promised a commensurate drop in crime. But the estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras in the U.K. have made barely a blip on the graph of public safety, a senior London detective in charge of the program admitted yesterday. Calling Britain’s multibillion-dollar surveillance network “an utter fiasco,” Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said video footage has solved only 3 per cent of crime.

    Multibillion. That is the beauty of a new technology. Boosts the economy without any real idea whether it works or not.

  • There is one thing that I don’t understand about the post-9/11 anti-faithers like Martin Amis:

    As the Ayatollah Khomeini used to say — in scandalized terms — affiliates of other religions think that they can go to church once a week, or even pray once a day, and that’s that. He said, Islam isn’t like that. The whole wave of Islamism is the revival of the idea that Islamism is the total guide to existence, that it’s not on the edges but right in the centre. If you adhere to this literalist way, [Islam] does follow you into every room in the house. It’s without its grandeur and beauty if you deny this central severity.

    What kind of person has faith that doesn’t get into every room in the house? It is like you have a relationship with the creator of all things and say: “feh – you can stay around but only in the rec room”? What kind of faith is that?

  • Dark matter is really out there. It’s apparently baryonic – unlike me.

Gotta run. School bus trip.

Consider Your Morning Break Options Accordingly

I thought that Tims had lost it when they introduced centralized baking. They certainly lost my trade but this is whacked:

Giving a free Timbit to a baby has cost a single mother of four her job. Nicole Lilliman, 27, was fired yesterday from her Tim Hortons job for giving one of the 16-cent blobs of fried dough to a tot. “I have been fired for giving a baby a Timbit,” Lilliman said yesterday. “It was just out of my heart – she was pointing and going `ah, ah…’ I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy.”

Can you imagine worse PR? How about Jesus showing up for the second coming and getting booted out before he’s done his coffee for annoying folks with the glow off his halo. No that would be not as bad – because that wouldn’t be firing someone for giving a baby a frikkin’ timbit!!!

Tra-Laa! It is May Again!!!

Is May the best month? Every year I get to March with gasping relief that the piercing cold is gone but it is only 60 days later that you can relax – just yesterday there was snow and hail…the size of corn kernels, too. No canned hams or golf balls but definitely corn. The crocus is done and lily of the valley is on its way. Even the annual two day ant infestation of the house is over. I should mow by Monday.

But April was kind, too. How many times did the Red Sox win in the last few innings, coming from behind or, like last night, waiting for the starter to fade so that they might attack his team mate – the unfortunate signing, the untested prospect or the fading star? Going 17-12 in an April that started in Japan is neither fluke nor overheated. Who would have thought May’s games against Tampa Beelzebubbians, Baltimore or KC would have meaning?

Group Project: Do We Love Biofuels Or Hate Them?

Finally. A new crop farmers can grow – even in the third world – that the industrialized nations a desperate to get their hands on. But all is not well with biofuels. We should have heeded the warning of The House Martins from twenty years ago:

Me and the farmer get on fine,
Through stormy weather and bottles of wine,
If I pull my weight he’ll treat me well
But if I’m late he’ll give me hell.

And though it’s all hard work no play,
Farmer is a happy crook,
Jesus hates him everyday,
‘Cause Jesus gave and farmer took.

Actually, I have no idea what that song means except it’s the only theologically anti-farmer song I know.

The pinch is being felt in the land of beer where prices are rising as there has been a shift from planting barley to malt to other crops to turn into automobile fodder. There has been some indication that there may be an increase in general planting as the marketplace adjusts in response but the effect on food crops has caused the UN to warn a year ago and now scramble to find enough for people to eat at an affordable price. And our Canadian House of Commons is grappling with how last year’s darling has so quickly turned into this year’s curse:

When the legislation was briefly debated in the House on Monday, NDP MPs were overwhelmingly negative toward the government’s approach, expressing concern that biofuels could trigger “a global food catastrophe.” The Bloc is supporting the government bill, but that party’s environment critic literally squirmed this week when asked whether he supports his party’s position. “We have a party line. The vote will be in a few days. I don’t support corn-based ethanol,” said Bernard Bigras. Asked whether he was uncomfortable with his party’s position, he offered a polite “no comment” and left.

A tragic if stunning dynamic is noting how a “green” and “sustainable” principle has caused harm to the poor, thus causing a clash on the left – where 100% of Canada’s public debate is occurring.

So what to do? In the new price range and future expectations nuke, hydro and wind power fueling electric cars (like the forbidden Toronto one) are looking better and better. Maybe also regulations requiring expanded crop production for biofuels is matched by expanded crop production for food. Babbitts and Randian nutjobs will say it is none of government’s business, that if people starve – well, that’s the market! What do you want to burn in your tank? Do you care?

Monday Morning Quarterback: I Watch TV A Lot

Not just TV, but I listen to the radio, too. I listened to golf on the radio at about 7 pm yesterday. 620 AM out of Syracuse had the end of the Masters going. Golf on the radio is hard to follow. Apparently there is a tradition and a guy playing lounge piano involved.

  • A guy from South Africa won the Masters. Good for him. He broke his major duck. Sadly, it was all nice-nice. Long gone are the days of Tom Kite blaming all around him for the failings of his game. That always was fun watching his thin veneer fade as things went wonky. No sniping from the crowd either like when Woosey won in 1991.
  • The Sox took 2 of 3 with Wang beating them on a four pitch complete game Friday. Big Papi is having a hard time of it. Pray for Big Papi.
  • Curling is over for another year. Thanks God. Now I can get some work done at the office. Curling this. Curling that.
  • The Morton have not yet made their big move to get out of the relegation zone. Arsenal lost, too, with our correspondent noting both Man U goals coming off cheesy set pieces.
  • I watched twelve minutes of NASCAR and learned of its proud moonshine connections.
  • I didn’t watch much hockey. The correct teams seem to be winning. I want a Montreal v. Rangers series and a Detroit victory over the Rangers in the finals and that seems to be on track. Ottawa is looking like it will be four losses and then summer. Did I pick Calgary in the pool? No I didn’t.

There you have it. MMQB edition #2 is over. The tradition continues.

My Last 24 Hours

I was within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 for around 18 hours not counting the drive to and from Toronto. It was very much like spending 18 hours within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7. The oddest thing was getting out of the hotel room to go to where I was speaking to the conference only to learn that the conference was at another hotel. I know the strip malls and industrial parks of the area within more than a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 very well now. I am enriched.